A special cell of the Slum Rehabilitation Authority of Mumbai extracted over 450 houses which the builders had not handed over to the authority since years as the mandate requires. The houses are meant for Project Affected Persons (PAPs). According to Dr Sanjay Chaturvedi, a real estate expert, a developer is required to rehabilitate slum dwellers when using the slum area for a project. When a developer builds the homes for slum dwellers and distributes the same, the vacant houses are to be handed over to the SRA for as PAP tenements. However, according to a senior SRA official, in many cases, developers have given the houses on rent. "Immediately after the cell was formed, we started issuing notices under the MRTP Act and where it was needed, we went ahead and filed FIR. We are ready to go to any extent to get back the homes that are legally expected to come to SRA and be given away to PAPs," said the officer on the condition of anonymity. The officer said that in the initial few months itself, SRA managed to get back hundreds of houses that builders hadn't handed over to the department for years altogether. Chaturvedi said the need of such a cell was always there as the quantum of houses being constructed under SRA is huge and there would be many more such houses that the authority has yet to get. The official claims that in the last few days, the claimed tenements have been handed over to MMRDA and BMC, which in most cases are the planning authorities and require the houses for the person affected by their projects. Repeated attempts to contact Deepak Kapoor, the chief executive officer, SRA got us no response. THE RULE BOOK

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