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The Lavasa project in Maharashtra, formerly billed as India’s first hill metropolis, has been abandoned after years of regulatory and financial difficulties. Aside from individuals who invested in the project, the influence of the now-defunct town may be seen in adjacent villages where residents are still fighting for the return of their property that was seized for the project.
The forthcoming Maharashtra assembly elections on October 21, 2019, do not provide much optimism for the afflicted villages, who believe their number is too tiny for any politician to feel endangered.
Lavasa City, India’s first post-independence private hill station project, is being developed at Mulshi in the Pune district. On Friday, the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT)’s Mumbai bench gave its final approval to a resolution plan that will allow Darwin Platform Group Companies, based in Mumbai, to take over. For the corporation in 2021, Darwin had won a bid of Rs 1,814 crore, but NCLT permission was delayed.
The Lavasa township in Pune, Maharashtra, is unlike any other hill city in India, nestled among the gorgeous Western Ghats. A neat and well-planned township may be seen as one travels along a smooth road through the monsoon vegetation. However, upon closer inspection, Lavasa is devoid of the most essential ingredients of a residential community like this – people. Over the last 10-15 years, the project, billed as India’s first private hill metropolis, has been embroiled in a series of disputes including land acquisition and a lack of environmental approvals. It is a ghost town with ready-to-move-in apartments that are empty, incomplete construction, or structures that have been deserted by their tenants.
Since a number of years ago, the villagers who donated their property to Lavasa have been resisting the project because they feel that it has cheated them out of their land and deceived them. They note that just as people and life in general are lacking from Lavasa, possibly the impacted people and their needs are also invisible to the authorities.
The Lavasa project was initially envisioned for the early 2000s and hailed as the nation of independent India’s first privately owned hill metropolis. In 18 villages in Mulshi Taluka, which is 50–55 km from Pune, the city’s 25,000 acres of land were planned. But as time went on, the project was involved in a number of court disputes alleging that it had violated the rights of local residents to their property and the environment. The project stalled as a result of the challenges.
A petition to declare Lavasa Corporation Limited bankrupt and resolve its financial crisis, which is estimated to be valued close to Rs. 60 billion (Rs. 6,000 crores), was approved by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) in August 2018. An interested buyer from Pune has indicated interest in purchasing the project in August 2019 for roughly Rs. 5.4 billion (Rs. 540 crore), but no deal has been consummated as of this writing. An irony is brought out by Tanaji Margale, a resident of Dudhwan village, one of the 18 villages from whom land was purchased for the Lavasa project, as the locals struggle for basic amenities next to the opulent township modelled after Italian hill towns.
For the Lavasa project, land was also bought from our community, Dudhwan. However, there are still individuals who reside in the village and are in need of the most fundamental amenities. Nobody responds to our cries for basic services like a road to our community or access to clean water. Margale, a farmer who still owns property in Dudhwan village, told Mongabay-India that one must up the hill for at least three kilometres from the motorable road to get to our community.
“We are not here to serve the government. Agents have threatened us, saying they won’t receive any amenities from the government and that we should therefore give up our land. Our hills were destroyed, and the trees and water resources were also harmed. Whether there are elections or not, nobody, not even the politicians, cares about us. They don’t care about our votes since they are aware of our little number, Margale stated. He stated that there are currently less than 250 residents in his hamlet and less than 10,000 people live in each of Lavasa’s 18 communities.
Margale asserted that, even if they choose to support NOTA, the populace will use their right to vote under the Constitution.
On October 21, 2019, ballots will be cast for the 288 seats in the Maharashtra legislative assembly, and the results will be announced on October 24. A politician of the Indian National Congress now serves as the representative for Lavasa, which is part of the Bhor assembly constituency. After the town management was declared insolvent, these would be the first state elections. Fixing a failed private township plan, which gained popularity with questionable ties to a political party, is probably not on the agenda for any of the parties who win the election, though.
The ghost town is degenerating :
Events like a motorbike rally or a vintage automobile rally used to take place in Lavasa up until a few years ago. Nowadays, the town only receives a trickle of tourists, mostly on the weekends when young people and families come for day trips to the adjacent towns or Pune.
There are obvious evidence of urban degradation all over the place. Buildings that have not been completed or abandoned exist all across the town. For instance, the Fortune hotel in Lavasa, which was open for many years, recently shut its doors. There aren’t many people on the site, aside from a few of guards who watch over thousands of square metres. The fate of many once inhabited structures is similar. The lake that Lavasa was constructed around has overgrown grass, unmaintained roads, and empty boats moored at one of its corners. Most of the structures that are still under construction leave their construction materials unattended and unsecured.
However, some people are still looking for a solution in order to save the life savings they invested in the project with. For instance, hundreds of individuals who had purchased real estate in Lavasa in June and July of 2019 petitioned the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) for assistance. To salvage the project, some people even created internet petitions.
“This project was excellent, and everyone did a terrific job, but since the project was put on hold, everyone has lost the work they were receiving. Sharad Patil, who had worked as a supervisor for civil works while the city’s expansion was in full speed, claimed that there is currently no work.
A lawyer and former Indian Police Service (IPS) officer named Y.P. Singh told Mongabay-India that the scheme was doomed to failure.
“The plan was flawed from the start, which is why the city failed. Due to the location’s remoteness, a fundamental accessibility and connection issue existed. There were several environmental difficulties as well, according to Singh, who had previously revealed environmental issues with the project. People had raised concerns about the project’s environmental infractions, which included the indiscriminate chopping of hills, the erection of structures too close to water sources, and the coercive purchase of tribe members’ lands.
The government and politicians offer the villagers little hope :
In September 2019, Mongabay-India paid a visit to the area and met with a number of locals who had either lost land to the project or had struggled to reclaim it.
“The firm (Lavasa) forced my family and I to leave our ancestral home and our forests, but it was unable to stop us from fighting for justice. But not the land—we were prepared to forfeit our life. We battled them and succeeded in taking back our property from him while securing our rights. Not one of us donated the land. Leela Bai of the hamlet of Mugaon told Mongabay-India that her battle helped to ensure that other villages would not suffer the same fate.
One of the 18 villages where the Lavasa project’s next phase of development activities was slated to take place before things went horribly wrong is Mugaon. Even now, a number of incomplete structures sit empty close to Mugaon. Construction materials were also strewn into a few fields without the farmers’ consent. The villagers were given assurances that the project would provide them with health care, education, and other opportunities for skill development. The villagers, however, claim that none of these promises materialised and that all they received was eviction from their land.
Kondiba, a farmer from the hamlet of Mugaon, claimed that his family lost their land and that no one came to their help.
“How our father’s property, which was roughly 8.5 acres, was taken away is a mystery to us. On our fields, they even poured construction debris. Today, in order to support our way of life, we are compelled to labour for pay. Although there is now no building going on, Kondiba—who once farmed paddy—said that even if it did, he would stay put since this is his family’s ancestral home. The taking of farmers’ land by agents without providing them with fair recompense or under the guise of forged paperwork has occurred in several instances similar to this.
A different Mugaon villager, Gangaram Margale, is still in court contesting the legal claim made against him about his land.
“We were going to sell four acres, but the agents lied to us and grabbed the entire fourteen acres. Our restitution was never received. Margale stated to Mongabay-India that despite the fact that she is challenging the lawsuit, she must rely on employment to support her family.
Even more incidents of people who passed away in the early 1990s being implicated in signing documents to sell land in the 2000s were mentioned by the locals.
Laxman Kokhre, a resident of another community with 14 acres of property, claimed they had no idea how much money had been paid for it. “Our land was shown to have been purchased from another party, who also received payment in restitution. Kokhre, who is currently working in other farmers’ fields to make a livelihood, claimed, “We don’t even have money to start a complaint. The locals complained that no one visits their village and voiced dissatisfaction with the elections as well. According to them, only the lower-ranking politicians or MPs show up at their place of business, and no leader seems to be concerned about them. They claimed that several villagers’ votes were obtained through the purchase of beer and money, a claim that was supported by the villagers who had already conceded that the elections would not benefit them in any case.
The Lavasa project had an impact on hundreds of local farmers and tribal people, according to Suniti S.R. of the National Alliance of People’s Movement, who worked on the matter with those affected in the valley.
“Even though Pune was experiencing a potable water deficit, the Lavasa firm received a total of 1.08 TMC (thousand million cubic feet) of water for their Lake City Project alone. Farmers lost their productive agricultural land near Varasgaon Dam because Lavasa was awarded a lease on it for a “public purpose.” Many farmers had their land illegally taken away. There were also a lot of environmental anomalies. The project, which was supposed to be on more than 10,000 hectares, was successfully stopped at 2,000 hectares. Approximately 94 hectares of tribal land that the enterprise had taken were also returned, according to Suniti.
They were in violation of local planning and environmental laws and regulations when their special planning permission was revoked. It is currently in bankruptcy and, according to reports, is seeking for purchasers. We are concentrating our efforts in this direction on problems like education, health, and access to clean water because now is the moment to fight for village-based, sustainable development with local people’s participation. Their fight goes on,” Suniti continued. The company that created Lavasa, Hindustan Construction Company, declined to comment, citing ongoing legal actions before the NCLT and its inability to address the project’s problems.
