Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) that presented its budget on Tuesday, reported a dip in the revenue in the previous financial year. It also said that the acquisition of encroached land is an unnecessary expenditure. Now, BMC has introduced a new policy under which the encroached plots will either be acquired by giving transfer of development rights (TDR) to the land owners or will be considered under the Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA) schemes.
With a vision to create more open spaces in the city, the BMC had come up with a 20-year Development Plan-2034 (DP-2034). As the DP looks at the development of the open spaces in the city, if at all any open spaces like playgrounds, gardens and recreational grounds were to be acquired, the per capita open space ratio would increase three times. The ratio of the open space as of now is 1.28 sq mt per capita and if the plan reaches its target, the ratio could go up to 3.37 sq mt per capita.
However, in the budget presented, BMC stated that the land acquisition under the DP is now divided into two categories- obligatory and discretionary duties. Under obligatory duties, reserved lands will be acquired for roads, bridges, drains and hospitals while under discretionary duties gardens, public parks and recreational grounds will constructed.
As quoted by Indian Express, BMC commissioner Praveen Pardeshi said, “When there is reservation on any land that is fully encroached with slums and if there is plan of development under SRA scheme as per the provision of development control regulations, the civic body will anyway get 25 per cent of the land for designated reservation. It is not advisable to pay huge compensation for the land, as only private landowners will profit.”
In the previous budget, BMC had made a provision of Rs 1,501 crore as capital expenditure to develop reserved land as per DP-2034. However, in 2020-21, BMC has only allocated Rs 785 crore.
