Decision junks leave-and-licence system, impacts 40% of Bombay Parsi Punchayet’s housing stock
For nearly three decades, every few years, 72-yearold Viraf Kapadia lived with the same uncertainty: would he still have a home? A resident of the Bombay Parsi Punchayet’s (BPP) Godrej Baug at Nepean Sea Road, Kapadia has spent 28 years leasing his apartment, worried about being considered a trespasser if the lease agreement were to lapse.
Article by Osama Rawal | Hindustan Times
That uncertainty may soon end for nearly 1,900 Parsi-Zoroastrian families in Mumbai. In what is being described as one of the most significant housing policy shifts in recent years, the BPP, the apex body of the community, approved a proposal on June 10 allowing all residents living on leave-and-licence agreements to convert to a tenancy arrangement under the Maharashtra Rent Control Act. The BPP has since received applications from 70 licensees.
“There were attempts to remove me earlier but I survived them. As a licensee, your future depends on the trustee’s decision,which can go against you,” said Kapadia.
The 1,900 licensees covered by the decision comprise nearly 40% of BPP’s housing stock across 22 of its 30 baugs, or housing colonies, in Mumbai. The remaining eight baugs fall under other Parsi trusts.
Before 1973, most occupants
As a licensee, you always knew your future depended on the trustees’ decision. Tenancy finally gives families the security they have lived without for decades. Dr Viraf Kapadia, resident, Godrej Baug, Nepean Sea Road
Rent Act practitioners including the internal auditor of the BPP Trust have made adverse observations and advised us against making this change.
For decades, there were effectively two categories of residents in the same colony. Why should there have been two policies? Viraf Mehta, chairperson, Bombay Parsi Punchayet
of BPP housing were tenants. The leave-and-licence system was introduced after the Bombay Rent Act,1947 was amended in 1975, covering the majority of new occupants. After the Maharashtra Rent Control Act took effect in 1999, all residents were allotted houses under the leaveand-license arrangement – they didn’t have a choice. This created two distinct categories of occupants within BPP housing— older residents with tenancy rights and newer residents on leave and licence agreements.
BPP chairperson Viraf Mehta said the decision to convert all occupants to tenancy was prompted by concerns that the leave-and-licence system could be misused. “There was an instance where the licence mechanism was turned against a widowed woman with three children on the strength of neighbours’ complaints,” he said.
An open letter by three trustees said residents’ cases routinely turned on whether they were tenants or licensees because “a licensee is far easier to remove”, making it “a quiet instrument of pressure”.
Kapadia said the decision has freed residents from the constant fear of eviction and reduced anxiety during BPP elections. “If you didn’t support a particular panel, you always worried what could happen if that panel won,” he said.
Vistasp Contractor, a resident of the BPP’s Goregaon complex for 15 years, welcomed the June 10 decision, saying tenancy would end widely varying licence fees. He, however, feared redevelopment could eventually weaken the Parsi-only covenant.
One of the dissenting trustees, Dr Adil Malia, told HT, “As trustees, we have a fiduciary responsibility to protect the interests of the trust and its properties, particularly when retired judges, senior solicitors, Rent Act practitioners including the internal auditor of the BPP Trust have made adverse observations and advised us against making this change.”
He said no licensee has ever been evicted by the trust. “We are committed to providing full protection to all our dear residents but that cannot be at the cost of the trust losing its character or protective control over its assets,” Malia added.