Mumbai: Residents of pagadi properties flay govt move

An estimated 52,000 residents of pagadi properties spread across Mumbai in areas like Marine Drive, Nariman Point, Colaba and Malabar Hill among others are up in arms against the government’s recent move to exclude properties of 500 square foot (residential) and 800 sq ft (commercial) from the Rent Control Act.

According to informed sources, while earlier the tenants of such properties were required to pay a fixed rent, as per the recent changes the tax and rent would now be collected on the basis of the property’s capital value. The immediate impact is likely to be in terms of a steep increase in rents which will now be about 6 per cent of the Ready Reckoner rate.

The increase according to many residents is likely to be beyond their reach resulting in a majority of such families being forced to move out of such homes and look for cheap accommodation elsewhere, a difficult task given the rental values in the city.

Taking up the issue the Federation of Retail Traders Association has now written to the CM Devendra Fadnavis requesting him to scrap the decision, stating that if implemented, landlords of such pagadi properties would have the right to act unilaterally against their tenants who had already paid huge amounts to live in larger homes.

Residents have also voiced concern about related issues like landlords not permitting repairs to older buildings in their bid to discourage tenants from living in them and requested for ownership rights to enable the redevelopment of such old constructions which are scattered throughout the city.

The issue has already got political hues with a local Congress corporator alleging that the BJP government at the helms of affairs in the state was colluding with landlords and developers to force people to vacate their homes in south Mumbai.  He further added that while the BJP\'s election manifesto had not mentioned anything about amending the Rent Control Act, the government had still gone ahead and proposed an amendment through the housing policy route.

…Mah govt to relax housing norms
Meanwhile in a related development, the state government has decided to relax the norms for housing societies to enable the sale of a flat to persons not belonging to the category the project may have been reserved for.

The move comes in the wake of retired IAS officer Uttam Khobragade\'s demand for making changes in the norm, following difficulties faced him in selling his flat in the controversial Adarsh Housing Society, after being named in the housing scam by the CBI.

As per the existing rules, residents of the society were barred from selling their flats to non-IAS officers, since the society was reserved exclusively for use by the IAS fraternity in the city. According to a senior minister in the state government there were demands from societies to relax the norm for flats reserved for SC, ST categories even prior to the Adarsh case.

There are more than 14,000 cooperative housing societies in Mumbai, where a certain number of flats are reserved for special categories like SC, ST and disabled persons However the only stipulation is that the district collector is required to supervise the transfer of such flats, but a society reserved for a particular category of people is barred from selling houses to outsiders.