"It is our private land. The government cannot force us into any slum rehabilitation scheme,” was the reaction of one landlord to the announcement by Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnis on December 1, 2014 that the state would acquire about 2,000 acres of encroached land belonging to five of Bombay’s biggest landowners if they fail to participate in the Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA) scheme, reported The Times of India (TOI) on December 3, 2014.
(L-R): Adi Godrej, Nulsi Wadia, Byram Jeejeebhoy and Muncherji Cama
Three of the "big five” are Parsi owners — the F. E Dinshaw Trust controlled by industrialist Nusli Wadia, the A. H. Wadia Trust whose managing trustee is Mumbai Samachar proprietor and Bombay Parsi Punchayet trustee Muncherji Cama, and the Byramjee Jeejeebhoy family — the two others being the Mohammed Yusuf Khot Trust and Veekayal Property. Not one of these is likely to give up without a fight and they are planning to move the court if the state government attempts to acquire their lands, TOI reports.
Nusli Wadia has in the past fought legally to protect the properties he owns and administers. The F. E. Dinshaw Trust lands are located mainly in the Goregaon-Malad area. The A. H. Wadia Trust which has properties reportedly worth Rs 1,000 crores, located all over the city, has in the past sold those that were encroached on. It had sued the authorities when the government failed to pay compensation for land acquired by the state. "We challenge the government to point out any of our land which is encroached,” a spokesperson for Byramjee Jeejeebhoy Properties Limited told TOI. "The company sold all parcels of land with slums in the last decade,” he clarified. The Housing Board had acquired 200 acres of their land in Goregaon in the 1960s, he stated.
Among the nine landowners who control a fifth of Bombay’s habitable land are Godrej and Boyce, P. E. Dinshaw Trust, Jeejeebhoy Ardeshir Trust, A. H. Wadia Trust, Byramjee Jeejeebhoy Group and Hirjibhai Dinshaw Billimoria, TOI mentioned on January 11, 2015.