More than 7 lakh Dharavikars of Mumbai will live in modern township, will be built with state-of-the-art facilities

More than seven lakh Dharavi residents, also called Dharavikars, will live in the proposed new integrated township in which modern, advanced, and sophisticated infrastructure prospers. It will also have large green spaces, multi-nodal transportation, a state-of-the-art healthcare system, and best-in-class recreational facilities. A senior official of the state of Maharashtra has given this information. The official said, "We need large pieces of land to build houses for more than seven lakh people. This is not land grabbing in any way. We are building large and green townships, not slums. Nor are we moving people out of Mumbai.”

According to a senior state government official, “As per the DRP tender, the last survey in Dharavi was done 17 years ago, in which only 64,000 tenements on the ground floor were counted, the tenements on the upper floors were not counted then. We estimate that the population of people living on the upper floors is more than 7 lakh and these people are living in 1.4 lakh tenements right now. Assume at least five people live per tenement. However, this can be confirmed only on the basis of the completion of a GIS-based door-to-door survey. The work started in Dharavi and railway lands in March 2024.”

The official said, “Now, to house such a large number of people, we need around 1,000 acres of land in Mumbai.” He said that as per the state government's development control rules, DRP has to build a maximum of 650 tenements/flats per hectare considering the population density.

According to a senior official, "18% of the plot is to be left for roads, 15% for green and open spaces, and 7% for all new townships and infrastructure for our Dharavi. In addition, 10% of the area will be reserved for commercial establishments, which the housing societies of the tenement holders can rent out to create a steady source of income for the maintenance of the system."