Government readily offering FSI charity under the guise of ‘SRA’, says Shelar
@the_news_21
Mumbai: There is a scam to the tune of Rs 3,000 crore of fraudulently transferring a prime government-owned plot of land adjacent to the Taj Hotel at Bandstand in Bandra West to a builder. In fact, the government is ensuring windfall for the builder by offering Floor Space Index (FSI) as charity on this prime property under the guise of Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA). This serious allegation was levelled by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader MLA Adv. Ashish Shelar on Tuesday where he termed the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government as ‘Thugs of Maharashtra’.
BJP leader MLA Adv. Ashish Shelar had on May 5, exposed the land scam while speaking to media persons here. At that time, he had alleged that there was a scam of Rs 1,000 crore in this case.
Reacting to this allegation, the sub-district magistrate had issued a press release stating that there was no such scam in this regard. In response to the magistrate’s press release, MLA Adv. Ashish Shelar on Tuesday once again spoke to the media at Dadar, Vasant Smriti BJP office where he said that he will reply to the magistrate’s response later at an opportune time but made yet another serious allegation in the same scam.
Details of the case are as under:
A plot of 1 acre 5 guntha land adjacent to Taj Hotel at Bandstand in Bandra West Assembly constituency had been leased to The Bandra Parsi Convalescent Home for Women & Children Charitable Trust since 1905. This reserved space was given to this trust to treat patients.
However, this trust did not utilize the space allotted for the said purpose. Also, the lease of this land expired in 1980. According to the 2034 development plan of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), this plot has been reserved as a Rehabilitation Centre. Before this plot could come into the possession of the government with the expiry of the lease agreement, an advertisement was issued for the sale of the land in 2020.
And then by 2022, the government granted all the necessary permissions to sell this land. In fact, this prime property had a structure with historical status but without any permission, the plot was handed over to one builder, Rustamji. It may be recalled that a few years ago, there was a similar ploy of transferring one of the heritage structures — Crawford Market to a builder. But MLA Adv. Ashish Shelar had raised a strong objection at that time as well and as a result the plot was saved from falling in some builder’s hands. He has now unearthed a similar scam that is currently going on in Bandra.
Talking about this new scam, MLA Adv. Ashish Shelar said that the government has granted permission to implement the SRA scheme on this vacant land wherein the builder will construct 168 permanent transit camp houses on this land. By doing so, the developer will be given all the benefits of the SRA scheme under the guise of constructing permanent transit camp homes.
If this plot was to be developed as a vacant plot, the developer would have got an area of 1,90,000 square feet for sale. However, if the development is done under 33(11) by showing SRA scheme on this land, the developer will get a huge area of 3 lakh square feet for sale. Also, if this plot was to be developed as a vacant land, the builder would have got an FSI of 2, but now since it has been shown under the SRA scheme, the builder will get 4 FSI. A 42-storey tower is likely to come up on this plot, thanks to the government granting 4 FSI and ownership rights to the builder.
In exchange the builder paid Rs 28 crore to the government and Rs 234 crore to the charitable trust and got ownership of this plot. This means that the developer got this prime property at a paltry price. Is this what you boast about ‘karun dakhavle’ (we did it), criticized MLA Adv. Ashish Shelar.
The charity commissioner, SRA officials, the suburban district collector’s office and the (BMC) seems to be hand-in-gloves in this entire matter since permissions have been issued from all these administrative offices. It also highlights the fact that some high-level minister must have also been involved. And hence this matter needs to be investigated at the earliest. MLA Adv. Ashish Shelar also demanded that permission to develop this plot under the SRA scheme must not be granted.
