After facing objection over its controversial proposal to issue credit notes to builders for building houses for Projected Affected People (PAP), the BMC has asked for suggestions from citizens, developers, private landowners and concerned shareholders for making available PAP tenements. Recently, after controversy, the BMC had dropped its proposal to build 12,000 houses for PAPs across Mumbai by giving out credit notes instead of money to contractors. The BMC has now chosen to build only 4,000 PAP units in Chandivali by cashless means, which will cost it about Rs 2,498 crore. This cost will be paid to a private builder by credit notes, Land transfer of Development Rights and construction TDR. The BMC would not have to spend any money on the project. In a statement, BMC said that several state agencies such as SRA, Mhada and MMRDA had provided the BMC 2,113 PAP units since 2015. The BMC currently requires 36,229 homes to house PAPs. The BMC said only 2,000 PAP units can be built on its plots. Out of these 3-4 plots, 700 PAP tenements can be built on the BMC plot at Worli, for which they have floated tenders. Likewise, the tendering process for Dahisar and Bhandup for 1,000 PAP tenements has begun. Thus BMC can build only 2,000 tenements on its plots. The BMC said that facing a financial crisis, it had decided to go cashless for its nearly Rs 9,000 crore megaproject to create housing units for PAPs. For the first time, BMC was to give out credit notes to contractors who were to build 12,000 units for housing PAPs. Out of the Rs 9,000 crore, about Rs 6,000 crore was to be paid by credit notes, while the remaining would have been TDR. The BMC said it had also urged the state urban development department regarding its credit note scheme and pointed out MMRDA had already executed a similar scheme. A civic official told the media that they had received applications for PAP units construction at seven zones in Mumbai (24,000 units). One zone was dropped and offers for the rest were checked. But, as rates were exorbitant, the UD department was referred, which said that the procedure was relevant. They carried out a rate analysis by checking the actual agreement value of transactions in these regions from the Inspector General of Registration and Stamps (IGR). They found the rates were only likely for one zone in Chandivali for 4,000 units. Image Source