Mumbai: Along with this breath taking view of the Mumbai portside are encroached waterfronts, unused storage spaces and acres and acres of land deadlocked in legal suits.
Prime land — 835 acres of it — along the Mumbai eastern waterfront, is lying unused. The size of the land is more than double the size of the city’s mill land.
This is according to a report that was sanctioned by the government of Maharashtra and this stretch of land could soon become the city's most contested piece of real estate.
That's what a study of the 31 km stretch of the eastern waterfront found.
The 1800 acres of land from the docks in the south to Thane creek in the north belongs to the Mumbai port trust.
Close to 800 acres are leased out to government and private bodies but almost 70 per cent of this leased land is disputed.
The report also states that fifty per cent of this land is not used for port activities.
With the closure of units like the Britannia factory and Tata mills, property in this region is decaying.
The Mumbai task force comprising officials of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA), port trust, Maharashtra Road Development Corporation (MSRDC) and Maharashtra Maritime Board will meet in a week to discuss the possibilities of developing this prime real estate.
Secretary Special Projects Government of Maharashtra, Sanjay Ubale says, "We have been saying that a lot of the land lying with the Mumbai port trust can be used for development purposes in the city for certain economic activities."
But the proceedings could well hit a stumbling block. The port trust a part of the committee that appointed the study now disagrees with the findings. It says that the study was conducted in 2002 and a lot of changes have taken place over the past few years.
The Mumbai port trust is not convinced about handing the land out for development. The report even talks about high levels of suspicion between the port trust and the state govt.
Such was the conflict between the government and the port trust that even organising meetings between the two bodies was not possible.
Now the state government has changed its stance. It wants to convince the port officials that it is only interested in developing the land.
The ownership of the land will remain with the port authorities. Whether the land starved city will get this dream 800 acres land or not will depend solely on a mutual agreement between these two bodies.
(With Shivani Muthanna in Mumbai)
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