Centre agrees to give salt pans for housing

MUMBAI: Union Industry Minister Kamal Nath gave his approval on Thursday to the state government’s proposal to use some of the 2,177 hectares of salt pan lands in Mumbai for resettlement of slum colonies under a self-financed scheme.

Nath said, “Some 460 hectares of salt pans have been illegally encroached and are partly entangled in litigation. Salt cultivation is also a dead business. On the other hand, both the Centre and the state are under pressure to acquire new lands to rehabilitate the slum colonies.”

He emphasised that the development would be “self-financed” and the land shared between the Centre and the state. Slums on land owned by the central government, like the Mumbai airport (80,000 hutments), Bombay Port Trust (15,000), and the railways (figures not available) would be rehabilitated on the Centre’s share of salt pan lands. Likewise, slums on state and BMC-owned lands would be resettled on the state’s share of salt pans.

Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh said, “The government will appoint a committee to survey the salt pans and work out a formula for land-sharing.”

A senior official in the state urban development ministry said, “The self-finance proposal is based on the Maharashtra model where the government hands over the land to private developers for rehabilitating slum colonies and in return gives him an incentive by giving part of the land or through extra FSI.”