Agitated residents blame authorities

But not all residents feel the need to panic, with many insisting they have done nothing illegal. Most of them want the issue to be resolved by builders and the authorities

MUMBAI: For eighty-year-old Sulochana Khanolkar, a resident of the Shri Krishna Nagar locality in Borivli, the Bombay High Court order pronouncing vast stretches of land in Mumbai as forest land means losing her biggest asset, her home. The order has left more than one lakh people in Mumbai devastated, as they worry about the status of their homes. The affected areas in the city are the predominantly residential localities of Borivli, Kandivli, Thane, Mulund and Bhandup.

Residents of most disputed buildings are making frantic efforts to get information about the exact status of their buildings. The high court order has sent shock waves among the residents. “I have been living here for the past 30 years now,” says Khanolkar. “I have seen the area get developed before my eyes. Now, suddenly, after all these years, how can our houses and the development that has taken place be illegal? Did the authorities not know earlier that this was forest land?”

Manohar Dumbre, a resident of Brahmand housing society in Thane, feels that if the land is acquired by the forest department, people who have purchased flats in the buildings will be the sufferers. “The situation is very serious as people are on the verge of losing their homes,” he says. “The civic administration and the government should answer why construction was allowed on the land. Flat-owners would be left helpless as builders would not shoulder the responsibility to compensate them for the loss.”

While residents like Khanolkar and Dumbre are angry and blame the authorities for the mess, there are others who are calm and see no need to panic. “Why should residents like us panic? We have been issued occupation certificates (OC) by the authorities, everything is legal,” says a resident of Kulupwadi area in Borivli, which is next to the Sanjay Gandhi National Park. “Even the banks have given us loans for our houses here, so where is the question of illegality?”

Property agents are going to get hit in this whole controversy as they are expecting deals in these areas to dry up. Nobody, they say, would want to invest in disputed areas. “The supply of property in these localities will be restricted. No one will want to buy property on disputed land,” says Tulshidas Sawant, a property agent from Borivli. “People will start looking elsewhere for a house, which might actually lead to an increase in rates in other areas.”

This statement is echoed by Sanjay Dutt, executive director of Cushman and Wakefield real estate consultancy, who feels that developers in other areas may gain at the cost of developers who have built houses in these forest areas.

On their part, the developers are pointing a finger at the government and the other authorities involved. According to Mukesh Sawala of Sawala Constructions, at least 70 buildings in Thane would be affected by the decision. “It is the revenue and forest department officials who are at fault,” said Sawala. “The government had sufficient time of over three decades to correct the records before permitting construction on these lands.”

Sawala criticises the government for what he calls mindless interpretation of the law. All the development claimed to be on private forest land is legal as per the development plan of the Thane Municipal Corporation, he says. Surprisingly, the revenue and forest departments did not object to the development plan when it was passed in 1990, he points out.

Developers have also thought of a way to get out of the mess. According to Shailesh Puranik of Puranik Builders Private Limited, most of the builders will avail of the benefit under section 22 of the Maharashtra Private Forest Act, 1975. Under the section, private forest land less than 12 hectares can be de-reserved by handing over an equal area of land and money to the government for afforestation.
 
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