Mumbai News: MHADA To Hold Lottery For Goregaon's Siddharth Nagar (Patra Chawl) Rehab Flats On April 4 After 16-Year Wait

Mumbai: In a significant development, the Mumbai Board of Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (MHADA) has announced a lottery for allocating rehabilitated flats to eligible members of Siddharth Nagar (Patra Chawl) Cooperative Housing Society. The lottery is scheduled to take place on April 4, 2025, at 11 am at the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Hall, SV Road, Goregaon West.

The redevelopment project, which has been completed at a cost of Rs 240 crore, comprises 672 semi-furnished flats. The project has received the occupation certificate on April 1, 2025, and will provide 686 parking spaces, with one parking space per flat. Eligible members have been paid a total of Rs 129 crore as rent compensation from January 2018 to date

The lottery will be conducted using a computerized random allocation system (RAT) to ensure transparency and fairness. Only eligible members who have been verified by the society will be included in the lottery, which will determine the flat number, building number, wing, and floor number for each eligible member. While the flat keys and other documents will be given on April 7, at 11 am from the Executive Engineer's office, Goregaon West.

This development marks a significant milestone in the Siddharth Nagar redevelopment project, which has been in controversy for several years. After a wait of 16 years almost these original tenants finally set to receive their long-promised homes.

The redevelopment of the chawl was stalled after the original developer went bankrupt in 2017, leaving the project incomplete and hundreds of families in limbo.

As per the tripartite agreement between the developer, MHADA, and the tenants’ society, the rehab tenements were to be ready within 36 months after vacating the property in 2009. As many as 672 tenants vacated their homes between 2009 and 2010, with the developer providing rent payments until 2014-15. But, construction stopped in 2014-2015 when the work was 40 per cent complete. During this period, the developer also stopped rent payments of Rs 40,000.

After the developer's bankruptcy, rent payments stopped, pushing the matter into legal battles, including proceedings in the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT). The project suffered repeated setbacks before MHADA stepped in to revive it under the previous Maharashtra government led by then-chief minister Uddhav Thackeray. In 2018, MHADA cancelled the agreement with the developer over delay in the project, non-payment of rent, and cheating the Authority over the selling of land to other private developers.

A new contractor Relcon was appointed in February 2022 to complete the project. MHADA also started paying rent of Rs 25,000 per house from 2018.