Mumbai: In a decision that will provide a boost to stuck Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA) projects in the city, the Maharashtra government has approved the change in nomenclature of financial institutions who financed some of these projects from ‘co-developer’ to “lender” in the Letter of Intent (LOI) issued by SRA.
The state housing department issued a government resolution (GR) implementing the decision on Friday. In April, the Maha Vikas Aghadi government scrapped 517 SRA projects stuck since 2005 which have not made several projects.
To revive these projects, in May 2022, it brought in an amnesty scheme for SRA projects and decided to implement a tendering process in such projects to enable the appointment of a new developer to complete them. The GR for the amnesty scheme issued on May 25, 2022, had appealed to financial institutions approved by RBI, SEBI, National Housing Bank etc to step forward for funding stuck SRA projects and said that they would be mentioned as co-developer in the LOI.
The GR issued on Friday suggested an amendment in the LOI document to mention such institutions as “co-developer/lender” and approve the implementation plan proposed by a capable institution appointed by them.
State government sources said the changed nomenclature will help resolve the problems in incomplete SRA projects. “It will help complete projects which are stuck. The lenders will also have a stake now in the completion without the responsibility of being a developer. They will get their financial interest secured, while the project is pushed for completion. Earlier they were not in the picture at all,” a senior state official told HT.
The amnesty scheme offered several concessions for new developers or financial institutions ready to complete the stuck projects. The scheme allowed such developers or institutions to be appointed without the approval of the slum dwellers’ committee in a general body meeting and waived the 5 per cent amount financial institutions were required to pay under the slum rehabilitation policy. The conditions also made it mandatory for such developers or financial institutions to ensure timely completion of the rehabilitation component of the project and timely transit rent to the slum dwellers.