Mumbai: Residents of Malabar Hill and environmental activists across the city have opposed the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s (BMC) plan to lease a 2,432 square meter plot of land adjoining Ramabai Ambedkar Marg, which currently houses a receiving station Brihanmumbai Electricity Supply and Transmission (BEST). , to an individual for a period of 30 years.

On Tuesday, the last day to submit offers to lease the land, more than 60 residents wrote to BMC commissioner Bhushan Gagrani and other officials, claiming that the land had been handed over by the Maharashtra government to the body civic with the aim of making it a public garden and that it must be restored to regain its initial function.

“Electricity substations can be built on plots reserved for public gardens, which is why the land and the two-story building that currently houses them are there,” said Zoru Bathena, a Juhu-based activist who took the initiative to write to the BMC. “The BMC may no longer see the need for a garden, but that doesn’t mean it can divert the plot for commercial exploitation.”

HT was the first to announce, on October 14, the BMC’s plan to auction the land numbered CS 439 for a period of 30 years, extendable by another 30 years, to finance its infrastructure projects. The civic body also planned to auction two other plots of land for the same purpose: the land housing the Chhatrapati Shivaji Market in Crawford Market which was razed in 2015, and an asphalt plant and testing laboratory at Lower Parel.

On November 4, the BMC Improvement Department floated a tender to lease the Malabar Hill land, with the base price set at ₹545 million. The BEST substation, which was not in use, occupied 2,432 m² of land, as well as a leisure garden spread over 256 m² and a green belt spread over 5,623 m², notes the tender, adding that the receiving station was in a dilapidated state and BEST had agreed to return the land to the BMC.

In their letter to Gagrani, Bathena and others requested the BMC to restore the garden plot. But an official from the BMC planning department said the residents’ claim that the land was earmarked for a garden was incorrect.

“In accordance with the development plan, the land is reserved for a reception station. It is located next to land intended for a public garden, and is not part of it,” the official said.

Bathena, however, countered the official’s claim saying, “The land falls within the green slope of Malabar Hill and the heritage precinct of the Hanging Garden, where any development and high-rise structures are restricted by the development control rules. BMC must cancel the auction.