MHADA to build 5,000 affordable homes in Goregaon by 2020

By Realty Quarter Bureau

Mumbai City is likely to get its first 5,000 new affordable homes coming up in Goregaon built by Maharashtra Housing & Development Authority (MHADA) by 2020.

MHADA will soon invite tenders to build these affordable homes on an 18- acre plot in Goregaon (West). The housing authority had won the rights to the plot in February after a nearly 40-year legal battle.

This is one of the biggest MHADA schemes in recent times (it had developed a housing complex consisting of 3,000 flats in Versova in 2009).

According to a senior MHADA official, the state government had acquired 282 acres of land in Goregaon in 1949, handed over to MHADA’s predecessor, the Bombay Housing Board, where colonies like Motilal Nagar, Siddharth Nagar, Unnat Nagar, Subhash Nagar, etc came up in the 1960s and ’70s.

However, a 25-acre plot was lying vacant, and one Shiva Shinde, acting as a front for a builder, filed a case in the city civil court in 1977, claiming that the land belonged to him, was never acquired from him, and that the title should be restored to him. The city civil court gave its judgment in 2003, which went in MHADA’s favour, but this was challenged both in the Bombay High Court and the Supreme Court, both of which upheld the city civil court’s judgment.

The plot in question is at a prime location near Inorbit Mall, Goregaon (West). However slums have come up on seven acres of the land, so MHADA will have to implement the slum rehabilitation scheme there. The SC judgment came this February, and the court fined the petitioner Rs 1crore.

“As all legal hurdles are now over, we are about to start the development process. Next week, we will be issuing tenders inviting bids from construction companies to build the houses. We plan to build around 5,000 flats on the site for various sections: Economically Weaker Section (EWS), Low Income Group (LIG), Middle Income Group (MIG) and High Income Group (HIG). Sixty per cent of these flats will be for EWS, LIG and MIG sections,” a MHADA official said.

MHADA building projects usually have a three-to-five-year timeline, so the first lot of houses can be expected to be ready by 2020, an official said.