Dharavi is almost a city within a city - 535 acres with five lakh residents. It is a mammoth slum, and Maharashtra government hopes to transform with its grand makeover plan.

The ambitious Dharavi Redevelopment Plan comes with a price tag of 15,000 crore to convert Asia's largest slum into a modern integrated township where residents will be shifted into multi-storeyed complexes.

Except, a government-appointed committee set up to implement the makeover has now questioned the very basis of the project.

The 10-member panel has written an open letter to the Chief Minister saying the plan in its present form is less redevelopment and more a sophisticated land grab.

They say that the plan corners the residents in just 47 per cent of the area freeing up the lion's share for builders. It means the Rs 3,000 crore cottage industry of Dharavi will die of space crunch.

To recover the cost of building free tenements, developers will create commercial housing with flats so expensive that the project will generate no affordable housing.

''It's going to devastate both the life of slum dwellers and is environmentally non-viable and non-sustainable and indirectly land grab, making a big profit out of it as land is scarce in Bombay,'' said D M Sukhtankar, Member, Committee of Experts, Dharavi Redevelopment.
 
''If you are going to give middle-income quality housing to slum dwellers, if you are going to give them all amenities, and look after 15 years of their lift and other maintenance and all of that, where is the question of land grabbing?'' asked Mukesh Mehta, Chairman, M M Consultants Private Limited.
 
The debate promises more fireworks as global bids for the project will be opened in 10 days.