Mumbai to get just 30 of 316 acres
Handkerchief-sized plots is all that the housing board and BMC will get as their share from the owners of mill lands who have to part with these plots for public amenities. For instance, the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (Mhada) has acquired only 2.5 acres from the redevelopment of five private mills collectively spread over an area of 52 acres.
This information was obtained by south Mumbai MP Milind Deora using the Right to Information Act. A back-of-the-envelope calculation done by this newspaper shows that Mhada got 1.5 acres from the 19 acre Morarji mill at Lower Parel, 0.09 acres from the 10-acre Matulya mill (Lower Parel), 0.3 acres each from the 7-acre Standard mill at Sewri, the 9-acre Simplex mills at Byculla and the 7-acre Dawn mill at Lower Parel.
TOI also accessed the latest civic documents pertaining to mill land and found that of the 24 private mills (totalling 316 acres) which have submitted proposals for redevelopment, the share of BMC and Mhada from these lands works out to just 30 acres.
The latest mill land sale—that of Hindoostan mills at Prabhadevi reported by TOI on Tuesday—too will not get much for the public. Both the BMC and Mhada stand to get less than half an acre from the eight-acre property.
Despite having to give away such small portions, most mill owners have still not handed over these plots to the two public agencies. Last week, municipal commissioner Jairaj Phatak while admitting that almost none of the mill owners had surrendered these small portions for public amenities, warned that the BMC would issue stop work notices if the owners did not comply within the next 15 days.
Although over two dozen mills have submitted proposals for commercial and residential development, only one mill, Matulya, has handed over both the Mhada and BMC share. Simplex, Gokuldas Morarji Mills 1 and 2 and Dawn Mills had proposed to hand over land in Goregaon and Kandivli to Mhada.
The National Textiles Corporation (NTC), on the other hand, has earmarked two of its mills—India United Mill Nos 2 & 3 (16 acres) and New Hind Textile Mill (eight acres) for the BMC and Mhada. This is in lieu of being allowed to sell five of its other mills to developers, which fetched NTC over Rs 2000 crore in 2005. These five mills are spread over 50 acres. Here too, BMC and Mhada have not received their share yet.
The largest share coming to the city from a private mill is from the two Nusli Wadia-controlled Bombay Dyeing properties—the 1.38 lakh sq m (35 acres) Bombay Dyeing Spring Mills at Naigaon and the 1.18 lakh sq m (29 acres) Bombay Dyeing Textile Mills at Worli. Both the BMC and Mhada combined will get a little more than 16 acres from these two Bombay Dyeing properties. But yet again, both these agencies have yet to receive their share.
There are in all 600 acres of mill lands in the city of which about 18 mills belonging to the NTC and less than half a dozen private mills are yet to be developed. The city could have got 400 of the total 600 acres if the original one-third formula for both the BMC and Mhada had been upheld by the Supreme Court.
