Mumbai building collapse claims 34 lives: Bhendi Bazaar tragedy points out flaws in cluster redevelopment policy

The collapse of the Husaini building in Bhendi Bazar in Mumbai, which led to the death of 34 people (including a 20-day-old baby), was followed by an ugly and convoluted blame-game in which every organisation connected with the building is shifting the blame on another group.One of the several reasons behind the collapse, however, definitely was poor cluster redevelopment policy in the state.[caption id="attachment_3997179" align="alignleft" width="380"]

Over 30 people died in the Bhendi Bazaar tragedy. PTI[/caption]

Cluster redevelopment refers to the repair or redevelopment of several buildings together in an area, rather than looking after individual buildings.

The Husaini building was part of the city's first cluster redevelopment project. The project was taken up by the Saifee Burhani Upliftment Project (SBUT) on 16.5 acres in Bhendi Bazaar.According to The Hindu, the SBUT cluster development project covered 250 old residential buildings and 1,250 commercial setups. The entire area is home to 3,200 families and the Rs 4,000 crore project is divided into phases. Work was being done on Phase One of the project, covering Clusters 1 and 3.The report further said that even though Husaini building was a part of Cluster 8, residents of the building had been told to evacuate already because of the poor condition of the building.But an aspect of the cluster redevelopment policy caused a delay in rehabilitation of the Husaini building residents."As per the government policy, in redevelopment, the promoter has to either return the same portion of the land to government or pay 100 percent land value as per the government rates," DNA quoted an SBUT official as saying. Since it is difficult to get land in Mumbai or pay the 100 percent value, the SBUT offered the government 25 percent of the land value but the request had not been looked into, according to the SBUT official.This points out an important point which was conveniently ignored during the blame game.First off, the BMC blamed MHADA. The BMC mayor Vishwanath Mahadeshwar had said that since the building was a MHADA building, "they are responsible".The MHADA, on the other hand, pointed out that it had warned the residents about the building's dilapidated status in 2011 and given a no-objection certificate in 2013 to the building for re-development. It said that since the SBUT had taken up the redevelopment project, MHADA could only send out notices and the ultimate burden of evacuating people from the building rested on the residents.However, SBUT claiming that their request for offering the government 25 percent of the land value was gathering dust shows that even the trust had taken some steps to finish the redevelopment.Moreover, many residents did not want to move out of the building. "Redevelopment project had been approved by the agencies, and subsequently this building was supposed to be demolished. The final approval for demolition was granted in May 2016, but a few families opted to stay in the dilapidated building which led to this unfortunate loss of life," PTI had quoted chief minister Devendra Fadnavis as saying.In fact, a resident who had left the Husaini building earlier, had said that SBUT representatives had been approaching the residents for consent for redevelopment. "It was only a year earlier that Saifee Burhani Upliftment Trust (SBUT) had bought the building and their representatives had been approaching us for consent for redevelopment. I decided that I would give consent only if they gave us alternate accommodation," The Times of India quoted the person as saying.With inputs from PTI