News: Mumbai Slum Redevelopment Now Exceeds 30 Years of Work-26-07-2026
Mumbai’s slum redevelopment drive is now larger than everything achieved since the Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA) was set up in Maharashtra in 1995.
According to a Hindustan Times report, projects are under way on around 2,156 acres of slum land, covering 1,202 schemes that house 3.21 lakh families. A further 607 projects are proposed across 1,015 acres, home to 2.85 lakh families. Another 271 projects on about 595 acres, with over 89,000 families, are stalled by legal, financial or administrative hurdles. By comparison, between 1995 and 2026 a total of 631 projects on 556 acres rehabilitated 2.94 lakh families.
What the SRA does
The SRA is the government body that implements slum redevelopment in Maharashtra. Private developers provide free housing to slum dwellers and, in return, get additional construction rights to build and sell flats on the same land in the open market to recover costs.
This differs from ordinary redevelopment, which means rebuilding an existing legal building that has become old or unsafe and whose occupants are already homeowners. Slum redevelopment replaces informal settlements with formal housing for eligible residents.
Why activity has surged
Real estate experts point to policy changes and the scale of the opportunity, which have drawn large corporates into cluster redevelopment. Santhosh Kumar, vice chairman, ANAROCK Group, said Maharashtra passed its slum cluster redevelopment framework in November 2025, letting developers take up connected land of 50 acres or more without permission from each resident. That requirement had been a massive hurdle keeping big names away, he said, and added development rights and higher FSI incentives finally made economic sense.
Pankaj Kapoor, founder and managing director of Liases Foras, told Hindustan Times that the spurt reflects favourable policy, a shortage of land within Greater Mumbai, the opportunities the city’s property market offers and, most importantly, the premium locations of several slum colonies.
The wider picture
Recent SRA findings show slums cover nearly 24% of Mumbai’s land and house more than half its population. Its survey found about 58 hectares of collector or government land encroached upon over the past 14 years. Officials said the figure for land owned by other authorities could be much higher. The SRA used satellite imagery and GIS, comparing images from 2000 with GIS data from 2011 and 2025.
Other agencies also build affordable homes. MHADA, the state’s nodal agency, has constructed 5.27 lakh dwelling units from 1977 to November 2025, according to the Maharashtra government’s Economic Survey 2025-26. CIDCO, active since 1970, had built 2.30 lakh units up to December 2025.
