Stop abuse of slum rehabilitation schemes, profiteering at public expense: HC

The Bombay High Court has criticised the government's policy of providing free housing to slum dwellers, stating that the policy is being abused and there is profiteering at the expense of the public. The court found that many of the rehabilitation tenements provided to slum dwellers had been illegally occupied or sold. The court called for urgent measures to stop this illegal trafficking and ensure that the government's welfare objectives are not perverted. The court will pass appropriate orders on August 21st.

MUMBAI: Reiterating that the promise of free housing to encroachers—slum dwellers—is fundamentally flawed, the Bombay high court on Thursday asserted that it must be ensured that the government policy of rehabilitating them “is not abused and there is no wholesale profiteering at public expense”.

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The division bench of justice Gautam Patel and justice Neela Gokhale made the observations after noticing that in a slum rehabilitation scheme implemented in Andheri East, only 235 original allottees were found in 760 rehabilitation tenements inspected by the Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA) pursuant to the high court order.

The inspection also revealed that 59 tenements were found to be occupied by persons, who claimed to be legal heirs of the original allottees, but the SRA had no record of them. “The SRA report says that 90 (rehabilitation) tenements are in occupation of purchasers and 290 tenements—over one third of the total tenements—are in occupation of unauthorised persons,” the bench said, adding, “It is indeed even more curious that 86 rehabilitation tenements were found locked.”

“This is now a clear and unambiguous record of wholesale trafficking, racketeering and profiteering by individuals at public expense and at the cost of the state government and the SRA,” the bench said without referring to the fact that there are restrictions on selling or transferring rehabilitation tenements in slum rehabilitation schemes.

The judges believed that “this is a typical scenario across the city” and urgent measures were necessary to arm SRA as the special planning authority with far more powers to stop this illegal trafficking in rehabilitation tenements provided to slum dwellers free-of-cost and on ownership basis.

“We have previously expressed as have other division benches that the promise of free housing to encroachers is fundamentally flawed, but if that is a government policy, the very least we must do is to make sure that it is not abused in this fashion and that there is no wholesale profiteering at public expense,” the bench asserted.

The bench said it did not see any good reason why the state government, which ought to achieve a welfare purpose through implementation of slum rehabilitation schemes, should have “its avowed objectives perverted like this and why private greed should be allowed to prevail over public need”.

“To put it bluntly: the state government is being defrauded. The SRA is being cheated. We cannot sit by and let this continue,” the bench said and added that it would pass appropriate orders on August 21 when the matter is scheduled for further hearing.

The court was hearing two petitions filed by slum dwellers complaining about illegal allotments of the rehabilitation tenements to ineligible people, nonpayment of transit rent to eligible slum dwellers and lack of basic facilities in some of the six rehabilitation buildings like non-functioning lifts and lack of drinking water supply, lack of occupancy certificate for higher floors in one of the buildings where all tenements have been allotted to slum dwellers.