Maharashtra offers stress funds for slum development

The State Housing Minister, Jitendra Awhad informed that Maharashtra has announced relaxations in its slum redevelopment policy to ensure availability of housing for slum dwellers in Mumbai and the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR). The state government will infuse ₹700-1000 crore and the remaining funds will be from banks like SBI. This stress fund will be used for the completion of stuck projects of SRA as the fund will revive them and benefit slum dwellers and developers. On non-cooperative slum dwellers who stall the projects, the government has ensured that with the help of the government machinery under SRA, the authority will ensure slum dwellers vacate the land under development, once the developer has cleared 70% of shanties and is facing problem with the remaining non-cooperative slum dwellers. Under Ease of Doing Business (EODB), the government has reduced certain procedures. For example, a file that would move six tables now will require the approval of three officials. Annexure-II, the list with eligible slum dwellers, will be done by SRA as earlier it would require three organizations including BMC, Collectorate and SRA. The government has decided the rent to be paid to the slum dwellers by developers while carrying out a redevelopment project. In Mumbai up to Bandra, the rent will be ₹12,000 per month and ₹10,000 per month from Bandra to Andheri/Ghatkopar and ₹8,000 per month beyond it. SRA has given a total of 1856 LOIs to developers for carrying out rehabilitation projects.