The Hindu Business Line : The fate of Mumbai's open space hangs in balance

At the heart of the matter is the on going courtroom battle between Bombay Environmental Action Group (BEAG) and Maharashtra Government, the National Textile Corporation Ltd, Maharashtra Pollution Control Board and more than a dozen mill and real estate barons over the appropriate division of mill lands between the real estate developers, Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai and Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority .

The 58 textile mills occupy about 602 acres of land in the heart of the Mumbai city.

Mr Shyam Chainani, Honorary Secretary, BEAG, who has been instrumental in moving the PIL against the State Government and the real estate developers, says that if the builders lobby end up putting up multi-storey office and residential towers in central Mumbai, where will the children play.

If we have to adopt globalisation then we must follow global standards on urban planning. In New York there are 23,000 heritage buildings, which are protected, he says. "In the New York city you cannot build a multi-storey apartment besides a heritage building. But in Mumbai no rules on land-use are followed. We have been pleading for decongestion of the Mumbai and scaling down of the floor surface index. There is simply not enough space left for new development," Mr Chainani says.

The bone of contention between the activists fighting for open space and State Government with builder lobby is the Amended Regulation 58 of the Development Control Regulation (DCR).

Under the original regulation, 58 framed for the redevelopment of the mill lands, 33 per cent of the total land was earmarked for public purposes such as schools, hospitals and public parks. Another 33 per cent was reserved for constructing low cost housing; the remaining 33 per cent was to be retained by the mill owners for commercial and residential purposes.

If the old DCR were to be applied the city would have got 200 acres as open space.

The amended DCR, which was brought about in 2001, has radically altered this equation. Today, the city only stands to get 17 acres of open space. However, the question of open space now hangs in limbo as the case is still being heard in the Supreme Court.

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