Adani invests ₹2,000 crore in Dharavi Redevelopment Project, construction to start in 6-8 months

The Adani Group has invested almost ₹2,000 crore in the Dharavi Redevelopment Project (DRP), the largest slum development initiative in Asia covering 640 acres in Mumbai, according to a report by The Financial Express.

The DRP is a joint venture between Gautam Adani’s Adani Group and the Maharashtra government. Adani, as the lead partner, is responsible for building residential and commercial units for the redevelopment. The group won the bid for the DRP back in 2022 and received the final go-ahead in 2023.

“We have already made the payment of Rs 1,000 crore to railways for the land they gave to us,” said SVR Srinivas, chief executive officer at Dharavi Redevelopment Authority, to the Financial Express (FE).

The railways allocated 27 acres of land for the project.

‘Brownest of brownfield projects’

Srinivas, an IAS officer from the 1991 batch, believes the Dharavi project to be the most challenging one of his career. He told FE that issues like high population density, height restrictions because of flight operations nearby, proximity to Mithi river, Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) norms and integration of residential and commercial units make the project “the brownest of brownfield projects”.

Srinivas added that the authority is putting a substantial amount of money into conducting a survey to count the number of tenements in Dharavi which is expected to be completed by March 2025. Additionally, they have also invested in staff appointments and the authority has returned ₹500 crore it received from the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (MHADA).

The project aims to begin the construction of rehabilitation buildings on the railway land within the next four to six months while the railway facilities will be constructed beginning in the next one or two months. Around 100 people are already working on the JV and it is planning to build 15,000 to 20,000 units in the south of Dharavi.

“Once we complete eight to ten buildings, we will start shifting eligible families. In the next two to two and a half years, shifting can start,” Srinivas was quoted as saying by the newspaper.

It has been announced that residents who have been living on ground floors since on or before January 1, 2000, will receive a free apartment of 350 sq ft in Dharavi. Those who started living after January 1, 2000, but moved in before January 1, 2011, will be allocated housing units under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) in Mumbai after payment of ₹2.5 lakh.

Those who moved in after January 1, 2011, and live above ground floors will not be eligible for receiving houses and would be provided accommodation on a rental basis with an option to purchase later on a “hire purchase” basis.