With the Supreme Court on Tuesday directing the residents of the 96 illegal flats in the Campa Cola buildings in Worli, Mumbai, to give an undertaking that they will vacate their flats by 31 May next year, the flat-owners’ hopes for a happy resolution to the problem may have well ended. On 12 November, the Supreme Court had suo motu stayed the razing of the flats by giving a further extension of about six months’ time to the residents. On that day, the attorney-general had suggested that it may be possible for the residents to be rehabilitated in a new building that could be built on an adjacent plot of land using unutilised FSI. [caption id=“attachment_1238221” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Campa Cola residents celebrate the SC stay order: Sunainaa Chadha/Firstpost[/caption] The court had given the extension till 31 May – and reiterated in its order today – on the grounds that the court had not been aware that the flats were still occupied. On Tuesday, after a brief hearing, the Supreme Court ordered the residents to give an undertaking within six weeks that the unauthorised flats would be vacated by the new deadline, following which the civic body may take action against the flats. As many as 96 flats over 35 floors in seven buildings in the compound are unauthorised. A protracted litigation had ended in February 2013 with the SC ordering that the flats be demolished, noting that the residents were in the know about the irregularities in the project during the construction. On Monday, Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan, who has dug his heels in on the subject and preferred to play strictly by the rulebook despite growing pressure from various quarters including from Congress Member of Parliament from the South Mumbai constituency Milind Deora, said the government’s sympathies were with the residents but that nothing much could be done with regard to the prospective rehabilitation of the owners of the unauthorised flats. A report in the Times of India said attorney general Goolam Vahanvati had no instructions from the state government on offering any solutions to the SC. Chavan himself was quoted as saying he sympathised with those who would lose their homes after May but that there was little he could do. According to the report: “We have full sympathies with the illegal apartment owners. But their rehabilitation on the same premises or on the adjacent land seems difficult,” Chavan said on Monday. “Accommodating them on the adjoining land will be complicated since it is reserved for industrial purpose. Even if the reservation is changed, it comes under Coastal Regulation Zone rules and, as such, there is little scope for their rehabilitation.” He said his government and the BMC will wait for the orders of the apex court. Following the SC decision of 12 November, residents, local politicians and municipal officials reportedly confabulated on whether alternative accommodation within the same plot or an adjoining plot was possible. A key option was to take back an adjacent plot acquired illegally by a builder – at a considerable cost – and build on it. This was however ruled out later as the land falls under CRZ. Another idea, to seek FSI for the existing plot under the earlier Development Control Regulations – under which certain portions of construction such as balconies, lifts and passages were considered ‘free of FSI’ was also discarded as setting a bad precedent.