"The State Housing Department and the Railway Ministry to come together. SRA scheme to be applicable to help 12 lakh slum-dwellers of Mumbai," tweeted Fadnavis.
The Ministry of Railways and the state government have come to a decision to clear encroached railway land in Mumbai by using a mechanism that has been enforced by the Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA). The decision was taken during a meeting between Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu.
"The State Housing Department and the Railway Ministry to come together. SRA scheme to be applicable to help 12 lakh slum-dwellers of Mumbai," tweeted Fadnavis.
The Railways currently has 879.51 hectares or 8.79 million square metres of its land encroached upon across the country. The area reclaimed from these encroachers is just 94.28 hectares, or just 9.42 lakh square metres. In all, Railways has 4,73,052 hectares of land under it, of which about 52,401 hectares is lying vacant, and can be developed or commercially exploited.
The eastern stretch of Bandra and Khar on the Western Railway might be among the worst hit in the country as far as encroachments on railway land is concerned. Railways' statistics reveal that the area has a whopping 46,220 square metres of railway land overrun by 3,935 shanties. A back-of-the-envelope cost of estimate of all these plots could be about Rs 5,000 crore, said WR officials.
As the Railway Minister under the UPA government, Mamata Banerjee in her February 25, 2011 Railway Budget speech chose Mumbai among four cities to build 10,000 dwelling units for slum-dwellers along tracks under the Sukhi Griha Scheme — Banerjee's pet project to give slum-dwellers living along railway tracks houses so that the encroached land could be cleared.
The plan never took off as the cost of the project was less than the money required to build houses for slum-dwellers.
The Railways requires land for two purposes. The first is to lay tracks and build stations, and the second is to lease or sell and raise funds for projects.
Encroachment of land either hits projects directly or indirectly, like the inability to raise funds from commercial development due to encroachments and subsequent litigation scaring off real estate firms.
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