At a meeting of property owners convened by the Properties Owners' Association, Mumbai, this evening, Shah said that property owners should not lose proprietary rights of their property due to some faulty policies of the government.

Leading city developer Niranjan Hiranandani who also addressed the gathering termed the amendment to the MHADA Act, passed by the State Government as dangerous and exhorted property owners to seek tenants cooperation and redevelop their property. The amendment stipulates that if 70 per cent of tenants pay 100 months' rent to the landlord, they can become owners after reconstruction. Hiranandani lauded the Property Owners' Association for achieving a judicial victory in the last one year but said that it was only the firststep. He said, ``In India, you either have ownership houses or slums, rental housing is dead.'' He added that unless there was more construction activity in the country, it would lead to a recession. The only way to solve the problem of housing in the city is by boosting the rental accommodation system.

M N Pittie, President of the Property Owners' Association in his speech said that it was the freezing of rents at the 1940 levels that caused rental housing to come to a stop and that is where the artificial shortfall of housing began. ``There are approximately over four hundred thousand flats which are kept locked and unoccupied by their owners in the city who fear to rent it out,'' informed Shah.

Shah added that this was a crucial phase for the property owners and that the five per cent hike in rent proposed by the State Government was a mockery of the December 1997 Supreme Court order. It had stated that pegging down of the rent at any level was not right and that inflation should be taken intoconsideration by the State before fixing a new rent. ``The five per cent hike is totally unreasonable, arbitrary, and unconstitutional,'' he stated. Besides, he added, a study by a State law commission showed that only 25 per cent of landlords belonged to the affluent class. He said that the State, while forming a new rent law, should take into consideration the concerns of the tenants and landlords alike and not of the tenants alone who are larger in number. `` The Rent Act is meant to protect the tenants but not punish the landlords.'' Shah added that government statistics of a 1939 study reveal that tenants living in municipal wards E, F, and G, which comprised the middle class area, paid 17 per cent of their income as rent. Today, the rent having been frozen amounts to 0.1 per cent of their income. For those who used to pay 20 per cent of their salary in 1940 as rent. The same amounts to only 0.9 per cent of the salary today.

Pittie said that while the current rent in the old buildings amounts to eightpaise per square feet on an average, the going rate in slums for rental accommodation is a higher Rs 4 per square feet.

B R Bhattad of the POA pointed out that MHADA and BMC have increased its repair and cess tax, despite a provision in the Bombay Rent Act which stated that if at all a subsidy should be offered, it is the State who has to undertake it and not the property owner.