Bombay HC Asks State Govt To Stop Abuse of Slum Rehabilitation Schemes, Profiteering at Public Expense: Report

Moneylife Digital Team 14 August 2023

Economy & Nation

Criticising the Maharashtra government's policy of providing free housing to slum-dwellers, the Bombay High Court (HC) stated that the policy is being abused and there is profiteering at the expense of the public, says a report.

According to the report from Hindustan Times (HT), the HC found that many of the rehabilitation tenements provided to slum dwellers had been illegally occupied or sold. The Court called for urgent measures to stop this illegal trafficking and ensure that the government's welfare objectives are not perverted. The Court will pass appropriate orders on 21st August, it added.

Reiterating that the promise of free housing to encroachers-slum dwellers-is fundamentally flawed, the Bombay HC asserted that it must be ensured that the government policy of rehabilitating them 'is not abused and there is no wholesale profiteering at public expense'.

The division bench of justice Gautam Patel and justice Neela Gokhale made the observations after noticing that in a slum rehabilitation scheme implemented in Andheri east, only 235 original allottees were found in 760 rehabilitation tenements inspected by the Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA) pursuant to the high court order, the newspaper says.

The inspection also revealed that 59 tenements were found to be occupied by persons who claimed to be legal heirs of the original allottees, but the SRA had no record of them. "The SRA report says that 90 (rehabilitation) tenements are in occupation of purchasers and 290 tenements—over one third of the total tenements—are in occupation of unauthorised persons," the bench said, adding, "It is indeed even more curious that 86 rehabilitation tenements were found locked."

"This is now a clear and unambiguous record of wholesale trafficking, racketeering and profiteering by individuals at public expense and at the cost of the state government and the SRA," the bench says, without referring to the fact that there are restrictions on selling or transferring rehabilitation tenements in slum rehabilitation schemes.

The HC was hearing two petitions filed by slum-dwellers complaining about illegal allotments of the rehabilitation tenements to ineligible people, non-payment of transit rent to eligible slum-dwellers and lack of basic facilities in some of the six rehabilitation buildings.

According to the newspaper, the bench believed that it is a typical scenario across Mumbai and urgent measures were necessary to arm SRA as the special planning authority with far more powers to stop this illegal trafficking in rehabilitation tenements provided to slum-dwellers free-of-cost and on ownership basis.

"We have previously expressed, as have other division benches, that the promise of free housing to encroachers is fundamentally flawed, but if that is a government policy, the very least we must do is to make sure that it is not abused in this fashion and that there is no wholesale profiteering at public expense," the bench asserted.

"To put it bluntly, the state government is being defrauded. The SRA is being cheated. We cannot sit by and let this continue," the bench says, adding that it would pass appropriate orders on 21 August 2023 when the matter is scheduled for further hearing.

Comments

User

M. T. Chiddarwar

1 year ago

Giving free houses to encroaches is insult and injustice to the law abiding citizens. Corrupt people in the related organisations and influential politically connected people are committing fraud in these schemes. Such policies are an encouragement to encroachers and anti social 'zopadpatti dadas'. Everyone must pay, why honest taxpayers should be butchered against their will?

iaminprabhu

1 year ago

SRA & Slum proliferation in Cities is BILLIONS worth of big black business at TAXPAYERS Expense run by Municipal Corporations since last few Decades !