Maharashtra government’s slum policy strange as it encourages encroachments: HC

Mumbai: The Bombay High Court has termed as “strange” the Maharashtra government’s slum policy under which encroachers are given free tenement, and lamented that an international city like Mumbai is known for its slums. In a judgment passed on Tuesday, a division bench of Justices Girish Kulkarni and Jitendra Jain said the state’s policy has resulted in large pockets of land being siphoned out from the “state pool”.

It also called for a “thorough introspection of such government policies, keeping in view the plight of the future generation who would suffer the ill-effects of the state of affairs”.

The court said once slums on a private land are recognised under the Slum Act, strangely the encroachment on a private land gets converted into a legitimate right of a free tenement to the encroacher under the slum policy of the state government, which, in our opinion, is as good as a premium on the illegality of the encroacher in encroaching on either private or public land.

The court said government authorities need to be conscious of the ground reality that it is a herculean task to remove encroachers from both private and public land.

The court said it is reminded of “woeful realities” wherein major public lands in Mumbai have vanished from the public pool and are subjected to private development by developers under the garb of slum redevelopment.

If the official machinery was to act as per law, today we would not have been confronted with the situation of an international city like Mumbai being also known for its slums on private and public lands, it said.

The court said the Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA) has an onerous obligation to reasonably, non-arbitrarily, and objectively deal with the valuable property rights of private citizens who are dragged in such situation where the monsters of encroachment and persons supporting them take the rule of law in their hands in depriving the land owner of his right

to property.