The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) urged the revenue department of the state to make a new policy to calculate the price of acquiring reserved private plots for the use of public schools, hospitals and open spaces, among other public amenities in the development plan.The BMC currently pays hundreds of crores for such land acquisitions as the collector’s office calculates the land cost based on the sale price of flats or built-up area of buildings in the vicinity. The BMC acquired an encroached plot of land in Dahisar reserved for a hospital and playground for more than Rs 330 crore using this formula in November 2019.Samajwadi Party corporator and MLA Rais Shaikh, who stood against the Eksar plot acquisition, met revenue minister Balasaheb Thorat recently and asked him to frame a new policy for land acquisition by BMC.Iqbal Chahal, the BMC commissioner, in a letter to the additional chief secretary (revenue) Nitin Kareer in 2020, highlighted that the collector’s office could not derive the cost of reserved land acquisition from the value of a built-up amenity in the area as the methodology results in an excessive amount of award in land acquisition cases and puts a huge load on municipal finances, which is public money.He also added that the award must be declared considering the higher value of Ready Reckoner (RR) rate and sale instances of similar types of land, and the revenue department is requested to prepare a comprehensive policy in this respect and direct the collector to declare the award as per the RR rate only.Chahal further mentioned that the collector’s office refused to review the award once calculated, even when the corrections are permissible. Praveen Pardeshi, his former commissioner, also took up the issue with the revenue department in September 2019.Image Source