Click to play videoMumbai: Another snub to Mumbai's powerful builder lobby by Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan. A policy that granted extra floor space to builders who agreed to build public parking lots on land they bought has now been revamped.
An RTI filed by CNN-IBN has found how the earlier policy gave builders huge profits and enabled the creation of unnecessary parking space that was not used.
Of the 28 approved proposals, 19 parking lots were created within a 3 km radius in South Central Mumbai and eight on the Senapati Bapat Road in Lower Parel. Of the over 28000 parking slots to be created nearly 15000, that is over 50 per cent, were proposed on this same road.
The scrapped policy was framed in 2008 when Vilasrao Deshmukh was the CM but the approvals were given during Ashok Chavan's tenure.
Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan said, "The entire focus was on incentive FSI that's why impractical proposals were coming for multi-storeyed parking lots, so we limited that."
According to the new policy, parking lots can only have six levels - two in the basement and four above. Thus reducing the number of parking slots that can be built on a given area. This in turn, reduces the extra FSI granted to a builder. Also, the builder now has to share 40 per cent of the premium earned through the extra floor space with the state.
This may stop builders from running away with profits without any value added, but experts say the new policy won't solve the parking crunch.
Eleven proposals got a commencement certificate before the earlier policy was stayed. Just a few weeks back the chief minister had also scrapped two major SRA projects that had been dubiously granted to builders.
Prithviraj Chavan seems to be treading very carefully around the builder politician nexus that brought his predecessors downfall.
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