Maharashtra government is ready give TDR to Centre government for Indu Mills memorial

Indu Mills to build a memorial for Dr B R Ambedkar

The state government of Maharashtra is planning to grant heritage TDR (transfer of development rights) to the Government of India, for permitting the use of Indu Mills to build a memorial for Dr B R Ambedkar. The Indu Mills is spread on an area of 12.5 acres in Dadar, which is owned by the NTC (National Textiles Corporation). Officials of UDD (Urban Development Department) stated, “The land will be included in the city’s heritage and after the TDR it will be a national heritage site. Indu Mills was excluded from the BMC’s proposed heritage list. Heritage list of 2012 is yet to be finalized as currently BMC is facing the opposition from stakeholders in that list

The National Textiles Corporation has demanded a compensation of Rs 3,600 crore for the land because according them they had been sanctioned a 5-star hotel on an adjoining plot, which was granted by CM Ashok Chavan, but later it was cancelled by Prithviraj Chavan. On Monday, the state urban development department issued a notification with its intentions to modify regulation 67 that deals with heritage TDR. It is expected that it will compensate the loss of development rights due to restrictions imposed when a building or land is included in the heritage list.

Heritage TDR can be used in certain wards, especially where it is generated and it has higher premium as very little of it is generated. But still NTC can sell it to other developers or use it for construction, According to price of 2012, it is estimated that the mill plot will cost around Rs. 4,000 crore. According to Architect Neera Adarkar, Indu Mills had been selected, but in later decision subsequent committee excluded it, Neera was part of a committee, which prepared the list of heritage sites for NTC. According to Regulation 67 of the development control regulations allows heritage TDR to land-owners whose structures have been declared heritage structures. As per reports, there is no clarity on whether the state or central government is entitled to TDR, so we are amending the regulation to include the state and central governments as beneficiaries. The provision of heritage TDR is a condition, which set by the Union government to move a bill in Parliament to get Indu Mills from NTC, said by the officials of Urban development department.

It is expected that the TDR will be handed over to NTC in the form of compensation and the United Progressive Alliance government is ready to hand over the land to the state government for the memorial. In July 2014, MMRDA was appointed the special planning authority for the conceptual plans on memorial, 13 firms had responded in which two were international firms known as; Jakob-MacFarlane (France) and UDP International (Hong Kong). MMRDA (Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority) is working on the design of memorial.

Girni Kamgar, Sanghatana and Datta Iswalkar questioned the logic of granting TDR to the central government. The land belongs to the Centre Government and Ambedkar had contributed immensely to the country, but the construction will be restricted as the land plot comes under the coastal regulation zone.