MUMBAI: The Mumbai Building Repair and Redevelopment Board of state’s housing authority, Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority or MHADA, has made an important decision to grant conditional possession of tenements to the next of kin of eligible original tenants listed in the master list lottery.
The master list names the people who have been displaced from their cessed buildings in south Mumbai and are residing in transit camps for decades. Those buildings had either collapsed or were in a dilapidated state and had not been developed to re-house them at the same location.
On December 28, 2023, a lottery draw was conducted for 265 eligible tenants from such old, cessed buildings to allocate permanent tenements at different locations of the city. However, after allotment letters were issued for flat’s possession, it was observed that many original residents had passed away.
In such cases, where the original resident is survived by multiple heirs, such as spouses or children or parents, obtaining a legal heirship certificate from a competent court takes around six to nine months, causing delays in the distribution of flats. There are also instances of multiple claimants of the same property allotted in the lottery draw.
To put an end to the stalemate, a deadline has been fixed. This decision was announced by MHADA’s vice president and chief executive officer, Sanjeev Jaiswal, on Friday. Jaiswal has directed the concerned officials to grant conditional possession of the flats to eligible close heirs of the original tenant, such as sons, daughters, parents or spouses, after obtaining a No Objection Certificate from other relatives.
He specified that the beneficiary heirs must submit a legal heirship certificate from a competent court within six months from the date of issuance of the possession receipt. He also mandated obtaining an indemnity bond from the respective heirs to ensure compliance.
Until the legal heirship certificate is submitted, the flat cannot be sold, transferred or claimed by any third party. This decision is expected to streamline the possession process for beneficiaries and expedite the distribution procedure.
A MHADA official shared that 53 of the 265 who were named in the lottery draw have not showed up to claim their new permanent homes. A couple of months more would be provided to them to come forward, failing which those homes would again go to the housing pool for the next-in-the-list to get benefitted. The allottees had bag homes in new buildings with the area ranging from 301 to 753 sq ft.
