Govt stalling Dharavi,need remedy: PIL by residents

Making the state government,MHADA,the Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA),Principal Secretary (Housing) Gautam Chatterjee and project management consultant Mukesh Mehta respondents,the PIL filed on Friday says that petitioners Malhari Honkeri,57,and Manjur Khan,42,represent “the residents and smallscale commercial,service and business establishments”.

Stating that the government was deliberately creating impediments,the PIL states,“On the pretext of ironing out wrinkles,Respondent 1 has been merely shuffling the DRP file from one department to another for the past two and half years….”

On the recent decision to hand over a sector of Dharavi to MHADA for redevelopment,the petitioners say it was taken without the promised consultative process with slumdwellers. They state agencies including MHADA had failed to tackle slum proliferation in the first place. The PIL says MHADA “remains incompetent and/or incapable of dealing with existing responsibilities leading to the mounting death toll year after year from building collapses….”

Questioning MHADA efficiency,the PIL cited the Rajiv Gandhi Project implemented by MHADA between 1989 and 1994 and stated that constructions were of poor quality. It says courts have in the past had to intervene in anomalies in MHADA’s working.

Alongside the GR on the DRP in 2004,the state government had ruled that no redevelopment of private housing societies within Dharavi would be permitted to ensure sector-wise,planned development of the slum. Because of this,slumdwellers,including the petitioners,are unable to carry out reconstruction or renovation of existing structures,the petition states. “The present condition of accommodations is deteriorating and the petitioners are forced to live or carry on their livelihood in precarious conditions,” it says.

Since the GR of 2004,one election to the municipality,two elections to the Assembly and two elections to Parliament have taken place,the petition states,seeking a direction to the state government to immediately fast-track the project.