Real estate’s slum TDR now linked to land prices

In Mumbai’s construction industry, where a few hundred square meters of additional buildable space can translate into crores, slum TDR (transferable development rights) certificates are equivalent to stocks of blue chip companies. But this much sought after market is set for a major change following the government’s latest tweak to Mumbai’s development control (DC) norms. Slum TDR is generated when a land owner/developer surrenders his land for building tenements for slum dwellers or project affected persons (PAP) free of cost. It basically allows such owners/developers to transfer the development rights in the form of additional construction rights on another plot. The incentive scheme has been contentious from the start with developers exploiting it to build slum/PAP tenements in far-off suburbs where land prices are very low and then utilising the additional construction rights on plots in prime locations such as Bandra, Khar and Juhu. The government, in a bid to break the nexus, modified Mumbai’s DC norms, indexing the slum TDR with land prices of both the generating and the receiving plots. While a similar indexation rule was earlier introduced for TDR generated against the surrender of the buildable public reservation, slum TDR, which accounts for 63 per cent of all TDR generated in the commercial capital, had been left out its ambit. Of the 12.36 crore sq m of TDR generated in Mumbai, slum TDR accounted for 7.8 crore sq m, show latest statistics compiled by the Mumbai municipality.