Maharashtra rewrites MHADA law to unlock redevelopment of 13,000 cessed buildings

The Maharashtra Legislature has passed an amendment to the MHADA Act aimed at removing the legal defect that froze Section 79A, the provision that lets the housing authority act on dangerous cessed buildings. The Bombay High Court had stayed the section's implementation — and nearly 935 notices issued under it — after observing that the powers may have been exercised without proper statutory authorisation. The amendment replaces the ambiguous "Competent Authority" language with an explicit authorisation for officers designated by MHADA.

Sections 79A and 79B were inserted into the Act in 2020 after a string of fatal collapses, including Husaini Building in 2017 (33 deaths), Dongri in 2019 (14) and Fort in 2020 (10). They allow MHADA to step in where landlords fail to redevelop unsafe buildings, and let tenants take redevelopment into their own hands with the consent of at least 51 per cent of occupants.

The stakes are large: Mumbai has more than 13,000 cessed buildings, most built before 1940 and concentrated in the island city, housing lakhs of residents. RTI data cited in reporting shows 345 full or partial collapse incidents between 2021 and August 2025, while MHADA's own records attribute 815 deaths to collapses between 1970 and 2018.

For the property market, the fix clears the legal path for stalled takeover notices to resume and could seed a fresh redevelopment cycle in South and Central Mumbai, where developable land is otherwise scarce. Execution is the caveat — litigation risk has narrowed, not vanished, and landlord-tenant economics will still set the pace building by building.