A petition has been filed in the High Court against the historic Dhobighat and slum redevelopment project, and the court has also taken cognizance of it. Also, an order has been issued to inspect the clothes drying area at Dhobighat in connection with the related dispute.
Accordingly, a joint inspection will be conducted by a court-appointed officer of the temporary space allotted to the washermen for drying clothes. Also, the inspection will assess the cleanliness, usability, and adequacy of the alternative site and compare it to the other site proposed by the petitioners.
A bench of Justices Girish Kulkarni and Arif Doctor also clarified while passing the above order that complete and correct information must be submitted to the court before allowing this redevelopment to proceed.
Anil Kanojia and Lalji Kanojia, the two petitioners, have filed a petition against the Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA) and the developer, Resonant Realtors Projects Private Limited (formerly Omkar Realtors), alleging that a reserved plot of 7,724.61 square meters of land meant for drying clothes has been merged into a slum redevelopment scheme without proper consent.
This land has been used by washermen and rope makers since the nineteenth century. However, the developer merged the historic reserve area used by 730 washerwomen to dry clothes into the SRA project without allocating equal open land for them as required. The petitioners have also alleged in the petition that only 264 out of 730 washermen consented to this project, while the remaining names submitted by the developer were fake or fictitious.
The project is proposed on 28,156.32 square meters of land owned by Shri Saibaba Nagar SRA Cooperative Housing Society. Out of this, 7,724.61 square meters of non-slum area is reserved for clothes drying. However, as claimed by the petitioners, who have obtained a license from the Municipal Corporation to use the land, the reserved land cannot be developed under Section 33(10) of the Development Control Rules. Yet, provision has been made for slum redevelopment on this land.
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Therefore, the petitioners have demanded that the area reserved for drying clothes be excluded from the developer's Letter of Intent (LOI), that the equivalent open land adjacent to the stone surface used for washing be demarcated, and that compensation be provided for temporary alternative accommodation, among other reliefs. They have also requested that the developer be restrained from vacating the premises until a decision is made on the petition. Meanwhile, the hearing of the case is scheduled for August 4, after the submission of the inspection report.
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