Mumbai Leases 15 acres Mulund Dumpsite For Dharavi Redevelopment

Mumbai’s move to lease out part of its reclaimed Mulund dumping ground marks another turning point in the city’s complex effort to balance urban redevelopment with sustainable land reuse. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has approved a five-year lease of 15 acres from the former landfill to Navbharat Mega Developers Private Limited (NMDPL), the Adani-led consortium implementing the Dharavi Redevelopment Project (DRP).

Under the agreement, NMDPL will establish casting yards and ready-mix concrete (RMC) plants on the Mulund site to service ongoing construction under the DRP — one of India’s largest slum rehabilitation and urban renewal programmes. The civic body expects to generate about ₹91.78 crore in revenue over the lease period, at an annual rent of ₹18.35 crore. The partnership follows the Maharashtra government’s earlier decision to earmark 124 acres of the Deonar dumping ground for building housing tenements for eligible Dharavi residents. Together, these land allocations underscore a broader strategy of integrating brownfield sites into Mumbai’s redevelopment framework — a move urban experts describe as both pragmatic and fraught with environmental complexity.

According to civic officials, approximately 50,000 metric tonnes of legacy waste remain within the 15-acre Mulund parcel and will be cleared before construction activities commence. The yard’s location near the Eastern Express Highway will allow smoother transport of materials to salt pan lands in the eastern suburbs, where new housing blocks under the DRP are planned. “Repurposing reclaimed landfill land for construction staging is efficient, but it requires stringent safeguards to ensure the soil and groundwater are not compromised,” said a senior environmental planner familiar with the project. “Such adaptive land reuse, if monitored properly, could serve as a model for dense cities running out of clean development sites.”

The Mulund dumping ground — operational since 1968 — was ordered shut in 2018 following judicial intervention over environmental and health hazards. Since then, the BMC has removed roughly 50 lakh metric tonnes of solid waste out of an estimated 70 lakh, though delays and logistical hurdles slowed progress. The lease to NMDPL also reflects growing interdependence between private infrastructure firms and municipal authorities in Mumbai’s large-scale redevelopment landscape. Adani Properties holds an 80% stake in NMDPL, with the state’s Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA) owning the remaining 20%.

Meanwhile, the civic body continues its parallel clean-up drive at Deonar, where Navayuga Engineering Company Limited (NECL) has been contracted for a ₹2,540 crore waste remediation project covering 271 acres. Experts say both initiatives — the Deonar remediation and the Dharavi redevelopment — will test Mumbai’s ability to convert its waste legacy into sustainable urban land assets.

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Mumbai leases 15 acres Mulund dumpsite for Dharavi redevelopment