“The state government has agreed in principle to issue a clarification telling tenants and landlords in the area that the government will appoint a planning authority for the area and unless that is done tenants must exercise caution before signing up with any developer on their own,” said South Mumbai MP Milind Deora.

Earlier Deora had written to various NGO’s asking them for their stand on the attempts by Lok Group under the banner of ROMF to get consent of residents for the cluster redevelopment of the C ward.

The state government agreed to make its stand clear after Deora along with prominent personalities like AGNI convener Gerson Da Cunha, RTI activist Shailesh Gandhi, historian Sharada Dwivedi, Narinder Nayar from Bombay First, environmentalist Debi Goenka and Shyam Chainani from BEAG took up the issue with chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh on Friday. Incidentally Nayar's name figures among the list of people that ROMF claims to have as core founder committee members, an association that Nayar has denied.

“Each of us debated the issue on various grounds but all of us agreed on the fact that the state government should undertake the planning and give out clusters to builders after issuing tenders,” said RTI activist Shailesh Gandhi. According to Gandhi, the proposal as it is now is a financially skewed one. “The FSI promised is unreasonable. Moreover the developer ends up with 32 per cent of the share in profits while the state gets merely 10 per cent,” he added.