Mumbai:
The Mumbai Municipality is one of the biggest land-owners in a city where real estate prices are on par with Manhattan and yet NDTV finds that it is virtually giving away its rights to land worth hundreds of crore, occupied by civic markets which has been thrown open to private developers.
As many as 43 markets in Mumbai built on land worth thousands of crores are giving way to the increasing number of malls in the city. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) is losing big money due to a municipal policy on city markets that almost resulted in the sale of city's historic Crawford Market five years ago, in what was then considered as Mumbai's biggest land scams. The project was scrapped after a public outcry, but the controversial policy continues.
The 40,000 square feet Dinanath Mangeshkar market in the Vile Parle suburb, built on land worth at least Rs. 400 crore owned by the BMC, is now being cleared as a mall. The BMC, despite being the owner, has no say in the matter as the deal has been struck between the developer, the Manthan Group and 70% of the shopkeepers in the market.
The civic policy allows deals on its valuable market property without its involvement without even calling for bids.
The municipality comes in at a later stage; only to verify whether the consent taken from shopkeepers is genuine.
''If there is any bogus consent, then we can definitely take action against that proposal," says Vasant Prabhu, Assistant Commissioner (Markets), BMC.
Once the project comes up, the builder gets a share of the property and the shopkeepers who till now were the municipality's tenants, become owners and the municipality gains just a small share in the new property.
In the win-win deal between builders and shopkeepers, the city loses public land worth crores.