Latest news with #PravinDarekar
Time of India
14-07-2025
- Business
- Time of India
Maharashtra govt panel proposes 10% extra carpet area for housing societies going for self-redevelopment
Mumbai: In a boost for self-redevelopment, a govt-appointed committee has proposed offering 10% additional carpet area to residents of housing societies opting for the scheme. In self-redevelopment, residents redevelop their buildings themselves without a builder. This allows them to enjoy all the construction benefits and profits, which would otherwise go to the developer. On Monday, a committee headed by BJP MLC Pravin Darekar submitted its report to chief minister Devendra Fadnavis at a function at Vidhan Bhavan. The recommendations will be forwarded to the housing, cooperatives and urban development departments. You Can Also Check: Mumbai AQI | Weather in Mumbai | Bank Holidays in Mumbai | Public Holidays in Mumbai "The proposal based on the suggestions of the departments will be approved by the cabinet. The govt will issue a decision regarding the recommendations made by the study group and a report on the work done in this regard will be submitted in the upcoming session. These important decisions will help in accelerating the work of pending housing projects in the state and help Mumbaikars realise their dream of beautiful and big houses," said Fadnavis. The committee has recommended extending the scheme to cluster redevelopment, where more than one housing society can come together for the project. The minimum area required for such cluster self-redevelopment schemes will be 2,000 sq m as against 4,000 sq m for the regular cluster redevelopment scheme. Each occupant in a cluster self-redevelopment scheme will be entitled to a minimum of 376.73 sq ft flat. In case of non-residential occupant, the carpet area to be given in the reconstructed building will be equivalent to the carpet area occupied in the old building. In case of slum-dwellers, the household will be entitled to 300 sq ft. It has been recommended that the scheme must apply to cooperative housing societies on private plots, cessed and non-cessed buildings, Mhada buildings, BARC, buildings on BPT lands and even slums. The committee has proposed that the district co-op bank, which provides loans for such self-redevelopment schemes, should allow the land and sale component to be mortgaged to the apex state cooperative bank. For this, it has requested the govt to direct the apex bank to make the necessary amendments. It has further recommended that agencies such as NABARD should provide funds for self-redevelopment projects. The govt must also ask HUDCO to give loans to district cooperative banks in urban areas to finance such projects. To encourage self-redevelopment in slums, it has been suggested that the govt set up a separate Slum Self-Redevelopment Authority. Just as the govt has allowed housing societies on occupancy class II lands to convert it to freehold, it must allow slum cooperative housing societies to own their land be it state, central or semi-govt agency lands. It has recommended linking the PM Awaas Yojana to this scheme. With regard to Metro Line 3, it has recommended that for affected buildings, govt should take up a time-bound programme and all buildings on either side of the underground metro that are dilapidated and are likely to be impacted once the underground metro becomes operational should be declared project-affected and a new regulation formulated in DCPR-2034 for their redevelopment.
Indian Express
10-05-2025
- Politics
- Indian Express
Decode Politics: Can a river desilting ‘scam' change the course of BMC polls?
As the Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed the state election commission to go ahead with conducting the long-pending local body polls in Maharashtra, including the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) elections, Mumbai Police's Economic Offences Wing (EOW) registered an FIR the same day in an alleged scam in the desilting work contracts in the city's Mithi river. The following day, on May 7, two arrests were made. The alleged irregularities took place at the time the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) was in power and could become a poll issue. One of the four rivers that flow through Mumbai city, Mithi originates from Vihar and Powai lakes and meets the Arabian Sea in Mahim. Nearly 18.64 km long, the seasonal river flows along residential-slum pockets and industrial patches. It carries excess water during the monsoon but over the years has become polluted with garbage, sewage, and industrial waste. After the 2005 Mumbai floods, the authorities started making efforts to clean the sludge from the riverbed to ensure uninterrupted water flow. The BMC focused on 11.84 km of the river for desilting work, as the rest of it falls under the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority. The Mahayuti government told the state Legislative Council in August 2024 that a Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the EOW was being set up to probe the scam after BJP MLCs Prasad Lad and Pravin Darekar raised questions. The SIT scrutinised the spending of around Rs 1,100 crore on the desilting work between 2005 and 2021. During the exercise, dozens of contractors, middlemen and BMC officials were questioned, and after finding a cognisable offence in the operations of desilting work, the SIT registered its first FIR in the matter against the accused for allegedly causing wrongful loss of over Rs 65.54 crore. The probe team also carried out raids at seven places of the accused. Among those named in the FIR are BMC Storm Water Drains department's assistant engineer Prashant Ramugade; deputy chief engineers Ganesh Bendre and (Prashant) Tayshette, both of whom are now retired; Deepak Mohan and Kishore Menon of Matprop Company; Jay Joshi of Virgo Specialities Pvt Ltd; Ketan Kadam of Vodar India LLP; and contractor Bhupendra Purohit. The directors of five contractor companies — Acute Designing, Kailash Construction Company, NA Construction, Nikhil Construction, and JRS Infrastructure — have also been booked in the case. They have been accused of financial irregularities linked to desilting, transportation of sludge, and dumping it on the ground between 2021-22 and 2022-23. The SIT has accused the contractors, middlemen, and BMC officials of conspiring to include favourable terms and conditions in the contract agreement on silt pusher machines and multipurpose amphibious pontoon machines, thus defrauding the civic body. 'Some contracts do not have proper signatures, some have bogus signatures, in some cases, signatures of owners of (sludge dumping) land are missing, and in some cases, landowners don't know that their identities are being misused for bogus contracts. In one instance, they used the name of a landowner who died 20 years ago,' said SIT member and EOW DCP Sangramsinh Nishandar. The SIT also claims to have found that the accused BMC officials pushed for the machines to be rented from a Kerala-based machine supplier, Matprop Technical Services Pvt Ltd in Kochi, for wrongful gains. The accused engineers allegedly prepared note sheets claiming that the work tenders would mandatorily require these machines, but did not mention anything about the purchase of the machines and indirectly forced the contractors to hire these machines on rent, as Matprop is the only company in India that provides such machinery. It has also been alleged that the annual amount of silt removal was repeatedly increased from the original amount, and the tender amount accordingly. The FIR says that only the sub-engineer determined the silt amount through estimation, with no scientific investigation conducted to determine the amount of silt in the riverbed. The police on Wednesday arrested 50-year-old Kadam and Joshi, 49, seizing electronic devices from the former and copies of posting orders of SWD department officials from the latter. The police also received the notes of entries of money received from the contractors and suspect these might be the record of commissions. In several elections across the country, including in Maharashtra, the BJP has used an anti-corruption plank to take on its opponents and this is likely to happen as the BMC elections approach. The BMC, the country's richest civic body, has been a bastion of the Shiv Sena since 1997, and the coming election will test who comes out on top, the Sena, now under the control of Deputy CM Eknath Shinde, or the Shiv Sena (UBT) of Uddhav Thackeray. It is in this context that the alleged desilting scam and its fallout could become a key factor in the local body election, used by the ruling coalition to target the Sena (UBT) that has said it wants to go it alone in the election and its allies.
Time of India
08-05-2025
- Politics
- Time of India
Netas vying to head Mumbai BJP unit as BMC polls near
Mumbai: The race for the BJP's Mumbai unit president is heating up. At least five senior party leaders from the city are in the running for the post which is considered crucial with BMC elections only a few months to sources, those in the reckoning include Marathi leaders such as ex-MLA from Borivli Sunil Rane, who is considered close to CM , MLC and BJP group leader in the council Pravin Darekar, Kandivli East MLA Atul Bhatkalkar, and Andheri West MLA Ameet Satam. The lone Gujarati in the fray is Chandivli MLA Yogesh Sagar, sources current city unit president, , is now a cabinet minister. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now The party policy allows for 'one man one post,' so Shelar will be replaced. Sources said that with BMC elections approaching, the Mumbai president will most probably be a Marathi, and chances of a Maratha leading in the city are more likely since CM Devendra Fadnavis belongs to the Brahmin community. Also, BJP in the last BMC general body had the highest number of corporators—45—in the Andheri-Dahisar belt. "It is no surprise those in the fray are all from this belt," party sources recently completed its membership drive and will soon be electing the state president and later the national president. For this, leaders (presidents) at different levels of the party need to be appointed. With SC directing the state election commission to conduct local body elections, BMC elections are likely to be held in Oct or Nov, said party sources, adding the party structure needs to be in place the city unit's core committee meet on Wednesday, sources said it was decided to increase the number of mandals in each assembly constituency from one to three. This will take the number of mandals from 36 to 108. The number of mandal presidents will increase proportionately. Besides, the party has one district president for each of the Lok Sabha constituencies; there are six LS constituencies in Mumbai. There will be one president for each electoral civic ward; BMC has 227 electoral said the party has decided to give more representation to younger workers. Thus, those appointed at the ward level will be less than 40 years old, at the mandal level less than 45, and at the district level less than 60 years old.
