Centre wants slum rehabilitation plan for Mumbai airport, but is the Maha govt willing?

The terrorist attack on Karachi Airport earlier this year pushed the Centre to at last think in earnest of removing slums surrounding Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport. But will the Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan cooperate and develop a plan for slum rehabilitation on an urgent basis? And who will bear the expense of providing the nearly 90,000 families residing in these slums alternate housing?

Civil Aviation Minister P Ashok Gajapathi Raju wrote a letter to Chavan in July this year, requesting him to urgently formulate and implement an airport specific slum development plan, due to slums posing a security threat and also because more land is required for this saturated airport. The state Government needs to do this because the airport is built on Government land (Airports Authority of India land). But no action has apparently been taken by the state Government till now. Chavan has merely sent an acknowledgement of the letter.

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CSIA is a land scarce airport - and is surrounded by slums which occupy 309 acres! Raju has said in the letter that these slums pose a grave security threat to the airport since they are located in the vicinity of aircraft operations. What various stakeholders need to do is secure about 150 acres of land away from the airport and develop low cost housing for the slum families to move in. For this, land has to come from the state Government!

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Not just from the security point of view, slums need to be removed from the airport also because it needs land for expansion - it is already near saturation and passenger handling capacity needs to be augmented urgently.

While signing the airport contract, the airport had entered into a State Government Support Agreement (SGSA) in 2006. Raju quoted clauses in that agreement to point out that the Government of Maharashtra had assured its ‘best efforts’ in providing support to the airport and Airports Authority of India in clearing the encroached land.

In 2006, MIAL had also entered into an agreement with Mumbai Metropolitan Regional Development Authority for removal and rehabilitation of slum dwellers.