Maharashtra asks Centre to free salt pans

MUMBAI: Land-starved Mumbai has 2,177 hectares of salt pans within city limits but under central administration. Today, Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh will meet Union Industry Minister Kamal Nath to decide how this land can be developed for housing.

“They will explore ways to make the salt pans outside the coastal regulation zone available,” said Principal Secretary (Urban Development) Ramanand Tiwari.

The pans are on lease by the Centre till 2016, but salt cultivators have moved to other vocations.

The state wants to rope in developers who will build houses for  slum dwellers and use the extra FSI for marginal profit.

This is not the first time the proposal has come up. Former BJP MP Kirit Somaiya says the idea was  his. “It got the sanction of the NDA at the Centre. We wanted the salt pans to address the housing problems of project-affected and poor Mumbaikars. But the Centre scra-pped the scheme when the state’s Congress regime wanted to hand over the land to private developers.”