Mumbai:
One of the Maharashtra government's key projects, which in the works for decades and aimed at turning one of Asia's biggest slums Dharavi into a spanking new township, now looks all set to be re-written from scratch.
The Rs 15,000 crore project was spread into 535 acres and affected 5 lakh residents.
Now, senior government officials implementing the mega plan say the project was bad in concept.
The current master plan divides Dharavi into just five sectors. But officials now want the slum area to be broken up into 75 clusters to provide for efficient rehabilitation.
They have arrived at this decision after a sample survey by the BMC found 63 per cent of slumdwellers in one of the five sectors being developed, ineligible for new housing. Most of them could not prove residence prior to January 1, 2000.
In a statement, the officer in charge of the project, Gautam Chatterjee, told NDTV: "After the elections results, we wrote to the government pointing out the problems plaguing the Dharavi Redevelopment Project. Implementing the plan is difficult without resolving rehabilitation issues."
This is the second time that experts appointed by the government have raised questions on one of its pet projects.
"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 Mumbai," said D M Sukhtankar, member, Committee of Experts, Dharavi Redevelopment and former Chief Secretary, Government of Maharashtra.
If this wasn't enough seven of the 14 developers have refused to bid for the project as they were unsure if the government could rehabilitate the slum dwellers.
But the man who came up with the plan in the first place defended it.
"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?" said Mukesh Mehta, Chairman, M M Consultants Private Limited.
The much-hyped Dharavi Redevelopment Project is key to the Maharashtra government's success in its Mumbai-Shanghai dream, a vision that's on the verge of crumbling.