Slum Rehabilitation Authority

in common parlance SRA refers to the redevelopment of the slums by private developers whereby the existing 'eligible' slum residents are rehabilitated in multi storied buildings on a part of the land on which the slum existed and the rest of the land is used by the developer to construct flats that are sold in the open market at a premium cost. The guidelines for slum rehabilitation were devised by Afzalpurkar Committee that was set up by the Shiv Sena-BJP government in the year 1995. The pre-cursor to the 1995 SRA policy was the SRD (Slum Redevelopment) introduced by the government headed by Sharad Pawar in early 1990s which failed to kick start as the developers at that time found it not very incentive. The 1995 SRA was a further reformed version of the earlier scheme, making it more lucrative and profitable for the private developers to undertake slum rehabilitation projects.

During the 1995 state assembly elections Shiv Sena under Bal Thackeray made an electoral promise of providing free housing to 40 lakh slum dwellers if elected to power. Post the formation of the government they appointed a committee headed by an IAS officer Dinesh Afzalpurakr and members like private developers-Gandhi and Niranjan Hiranadani and NGO representatives like Sheela Patel from SPARC. SRA during all these years has become the most lucrative real estate active as provides for the maximum of FSI under the re-development options and has also led to financialisation of slum land. Thus it becomes of benefit to state agencies, private developers and a section of slum residents to have their settlement declared as slum as they become eligible for higher development rights. This has resulted in 'slumificatin' of many of the settlements.