Mumbai, June 7 (IANS) The largest urban redevelopment project in Asia at Dharavi in central Mumbai, being undertaken by the Adani Group, involves the rehabilitation of more than 1 million slum dwellers for whom 125,000 homes are being constructed.

Dharavi, located in central Mumbai, is widely regarded as Asia’s largest slum. Spread over an area of around 600 acres, it houses more than a million people in a densely populated slum along with four large industries — pottery, food processing, leather, and plastic scrap, according to an HSBC report.

The Dharavi Redevelopment Project, approved in 2022, is structured as a public-private partnership between the Maharashtra Government (20 per cent) and Adani Group (80 per cent) and aims to transform the slum into an urban transit-oriented hub by rehabilitating the slum dwellers into high-rise tenements, upgrading infrastructure, and using the free sale area to build residential and commercial projects.

The redevelopment project spans over an area of 225msf, of which 95msf is a rehabilitation area, and 130msf is a free sale area. The 95msf of rehabilitation involves more than 1 million slum dwellers for whom over 125,000 units are planned to be constructed. Half of these are planned in the current area of Dharavi, while the rest are spread across six areas in the MMR region, the report stated.

The ambitious project also unlocks a massive 130msf of free sale area for the Adani Group, located around 5km from Mumbai’s central business district of Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC). To put the number in context, it is about 2.5 times the city’s residential absorption in FY26. The Adani Group has plans to develop residential and commercial projects in the area along with major infrastructure upgrades, including a multi-modal transport hub with three metro stations, bus depots, sports centres, schools, healthcare facilities, green spaces and walkways, as per the report.

The Adani Group aims to execute the rehabilitation portion of the project over the next seven to eight years, with the first building on the land parcel of Indian Railways to be handed over in December 2026 and the construction of 30,000 units to be underway in FY27. The company also plans to provide 10 years of O&M for the rehabilitated units, clean up the Mithi river and Deonar dumping ground, develop a 6 km-long mangrove creek and a Marine Drive-style promenade along the Mithi river, amongst other infrastructure upgrades, the report added.

–IANS

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