Promised SRA flats in 2006, residents are still stuck in a transit camp

As with any project that goes into redevelopment, several senior citizens here have spent the last leg of their lives waiting for a new home. “When am I going to see this house with my own eyes before I leave it to my daughter?” asked 80-year-old Kamla Mishra, who lives alone in a room on the first floor

Mumbai: Ankit and Simran Yadav are siblings who have grown up in a transit camp called Jai Shiv Sai CHS in Bandra East. Promised a Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA) flat after their chawl was demolished in 2006, their sojourn at the camp was meant to be three years. Twenty years later, they are still there in two separate eight-by-eight-feet rooms; Ankit with his grandmother on the third floor and Simran with her parents on the fourth floor.

Jai SHiv Sai Building at Bandra East, seems to be on its last legs structurally, with residents claiming that it sways during heavy winds. (Vijay Bate/HT Photo)

With age, the building has fallen into disrepair. The walls are stained, the metal has rusted, the wood of the doors is peeling off, and dirt has collected on every surface. Blue tarpaulin is draped over two sides of the building like a tablecloth—this was put up, said Ankit, only on July 31 after weeks of pestering the builder, G M Constructions. Till then, the residents lived with rainwater seeping into their homes.

There is no dearth of horror stories lining the dark corridors of the four-storey building. Ankit points to patches of uneven cement on the floor of the room. “There were cracks and holes here,” he said. “The builder filled them just a few days ago.” His family has been luckier than other residents, who said they filled the holes in their floors themselves with cement.

A resident on the third floor had a door, which had rotted in the rain, fall on her arm, which made it swell up. The remnants of the broken door still lie in a heap; a new door was installed only after the resident’s injury.

Other testimonies of disgruntlement abound. Vidyadhar Tiwari, who lives on the third floor, complained of bedbugs. Others groused that no cleaning was ever done in the building or the common toilets, four to a floor. “We even found a rat tail in the water tank once,” said Simran.

As with any project that goes into redevelopment, several senior citizens here have spent the last leg of their lives waiting for a new home. “When am I going to see this house with my own eyes before I leave it to my daughter?” asked 80-year-old Kamla Mishra, who lives alone in a room on the first floor. Mishra slipped last year in the toilet and injured herself. Even the one flight of stairs to her room is now too much for her, and she is entirely dependent on neighbours for outside chores and trips to the doctor.

Not all the families in the nine rooms on each floor moved in when the Yadavs did—some came when the other adjacent transit camps were demolished while some shifted in when the builder stopped paying them rent for alternative accommodation. Two SRA buildings in the project are up and occupied, but the third, the one on which the camp’s residents have pinned their hopes, is far from ready.

An SRA engineer, when questioned, said that an estimated timeline could not be given, but the building had reached construction till the plinth stage. However, he added, since it was the residents who had opted for the developer who was causing the delay, their only option would be to take steps to replace him. The builder did not respond to questions from Hindustan Times.

The transit camp now seems to be on its last legs structurally, with residents claiming that it sways during heavy winds. Despite the allegedly unsound construction, the builder obtained a certificate of structural stability from a private civil engineering firm, Hiralal M Tanna, in 2018, but failed to carry out the minor repairs recommended.

Even the two ready SRA buildings are not without problems. According to camp resident Prakash Mishra, the builder does not have the requisite approval for the 269-square-feet flats and hence the two buildings are without occupation certificates. “The builder has also not paid the mandatory rent—around ₹55 lakh—for the transit camp land to the PWD department,” he said.

The fate of the transit camp’s residents is up in the air as of now. Battling worries about the state of their creaking building and soldiering on amid their many problems, their hopes of getting their promised houses are becoming more tenuous by the day.