Acting on the Afzulpurkar Committee's report, Maharashtra amended its slum legislation and constituted the Slum Rehabilitation Authority in December 1995 as a single-window planning authority for slum land in Greater Mumbai. Under Development Control Regulation 33(10) a developer rehouses eligible slum households in free tenements on part of the site and is paid in incentive floor space on the remainder, or in Transferable Development Rights usable elsewhere in the city. Residents surrender the ground in exchange for a small apartment; the state contributes land and permissions rather than money. The model has delivered thousands of rehabilitation buildings, but also cross-subsidised luxury towers, dense tenement dumping in the northern suburbs and long disputes over eligibility cut-off dates.
The SRA replaced demolition and public housing with market-financed in-situ rehabilitation, and became the template later scaled up nationally through Rajiv Awas Yojana and the in-situ redevelopment vertical of PMAY-Urban. TDR, its financing device, turned development rights into a tradeable commodity and reorganised where density lands across Mumbai.
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