Click to play videoMumbai: Residents of Bandra's Pereriawadi Colony in Mumbai's allege fraud by a local builder under the Slum Rehabilitation Scheme.
Documents procured through RTI reveal how several names of original residents have been listed as ineligible for a Slum Rehabilitation Scheme flat.
"They threaten our families. Say you're ineligible, so leave this house," John Parmar says.
Fifty-year-old Parmar is among several tenants of Pereriawadi Colony who are allegedly being pressurised by a local builder to vacate under the Slum Rehabilitation Scheme. And a RTI document is adding to their fear.
In a survey by the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (MHADA), more than a dozen tenants of the colony have been listed as "ineligible" for a house under the scheme.
That's because their names were missing and many could not give address proof.
The builder had formed a registered society allegedly in connivance with a few tenants to apply for the scheme to construct a multi-storey building and has the consent of only 35 per cent of the tenants while the scheme says 70 per cent must agree.
"We are not convinced what the plan is. Why should we shift?" asks Lavina Fernandes, whose family has lived in the colony for three generations.
For many the cluster of houses in the colony may seem cramped but for local builders, it's a potential real estate goldmine
Under the scheme, if occupants have to vacate, the builder must arrange for an alternate stay till new houses are built for them but the builder apparently offered a year's rent instead. While some residents took it, Parmar alleges they were pressurised.
However, the builder disagrees.
"Tenants are the problem in SRA. Builders want to give them good homes," Dilip Patil, proprietor, Sai Aarnav Builders, says.
Residents fear that if the builder isn't stopped, their homes will soon be buried under the rubble.
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