Mumbai: President Draupadi Murmu on Friday signed the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Act Amendment Bill, paving the way for the redevelopment of dangerous and stalled cess buildings in the financial capital. This will enable the government to take over stalled cess-building projects and redevelop them through MHADA. Deputy CM Fadnavis thanked President Draupadi Murmu and Union Home Minister Amit Shah in a tweet mentioning the same.
The redevelopment of over 56 cess buildings in the metropolis was stalled or incomplete. Now, MHADA can directly take over such buildings and redevelop them with the amendments in the MHADA Act 1976. These buildings were paying cess (a kind of levy), but their redevelopment was stuck despite being categorized as dangerous structures.
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With the passing of the bill, if the Mumbai Municipal Corporation declares a cess building as dangerous, the building owner will first be given an opportunity to redevelop the building. If he does not submit a redevelopment proposal within 6 months, the tenants will be given a second chance. If they do not submit a proposal for redevelopment within 6 months, MHADA can take possession of those buildings and redevelop them.
The bill has provisions to provide compensation to the land owner of the concerned building at the rate of 25 percent of the carpet area or 15 percent of the build-up area of the selling unit, whichever is higher. On July 28, 2022, the state government submitted all the documents and photographs of such pending redevelopment plans, and pending court cases to the Union Home Ministry. For this, Fadnavis had consistently insisted on the approval of the bill to the Union Home Ministry.
