Dharavi Families Lose Resettlement Claims as Document Fraud Erases Records

At least three families residing in Sector 4 of Dharavi have filed written complaints with the Dharavi Redevelopment Project authority since April 2026, alleging that photographs attached to their household survey forms were substituted or duplicated, effectively replacing their identity records with those of other claimants. The complaints, copies of which were reviewed by The Daily Mumbai, describe a pattern that residents say is pushing legitimate occupants off eligibility lists ahead of the project's first construction milestone.

The timing matters. The Adani-backed Dharavi Redevelopment Project Pvt Ltd, appointed by the Maharashtra government in November 2022 to redevelop the roughly 240-hectare settlement, is now in the phase of finalising beneficiary lists. A flawed or manipulated survey record at this stage can mean the difference between a free 350-square-foot flat and permanent displacement. With the monsoon compounding overcrowding in transit camps along 90 Feet Road near Mahim, residents say the bureaucratic errors feel anything but accidental.

What Residents Say Is Happening

The complaints describe a specific mechanism: during the door-to-door photographic survey conducted under the Slum Rehabilitation Authority's protocols, some household images were later found to have been swapped with photographs of different individuals or, in two documented cases, duplicated across multiple forms to support additional claimants. Families who noticed the discrepancy only did so after receiving their provisional survey receipts, a document that carries the photograph as the primary visual identifier.

One complaint, filed on 14 April 2026 and stamped by the Dharavi Redevelopment Project grievance cell, describes a household of six in Kumbharwada who discovered their survey entry now carries a photograph of an entirely different family. The complainants allege they raised the issue first with their local Slum Rehabilitation Authority liaison in March, received no response, and only then escalated in writing. The Daily Mumbai is not naming the complainants to protect them from potential intimidation, but has verified the document reference numbers.

Community-based organisations working in the area, including the non-profit Apnalaya, which has operated welfare programs in Shivaji Nagar and parts of Dharavi since 2009, say they have received informal reports of similar concerns from at least a dozen households across different sectors. Apnalaya has not formally published these figures, and the organisation has not confirmed independently whether the photograph substitutions are isolated data-entry errors or coordinated fraud.

The Stakes Behind a Single Photograph

Maharashtra's Slum Rehabilitation Authority rules require photographic identification as a mandatory component of survey validation. A mismatch between a photograph and the named beneficiary can trigger a formal objection, freezing a claimant's file for months. Legal advocates working with Ghar Bachao Ghar Banao Andolan, a housing rights group active across Mumbai's western suburbs, say that challenging such a freeze through the SRA's internal process currently takes between four and eight months on average, long enough to miss a resettlement notification window.

The Dharavi redevelopment involves an estimated 68,000 households, according to figures cited in Maharashtra government presentations to the state legislature in 2023. Even a fraction of one percent of files compromised by duplicate or replaced images could affect hundreds of families. The free housing component of the scheme is available only to residents who can demonstrate continuous occupation before January 2000, making a clean survey record the single most important document a family holds.

Residents filing complaints have been told by grievance cell staff to submit affidavits alongside new photographs and two supporting witnesses, a process that requires notarisation, which costs between Rs 500 and Rs 1,500 at offices near Sion Court, and typically takes three to five working days. For daily-wage workers in Dharavi's leather and pottery clusters, that is not a trivial demand.

Advocacy groups are urging affected residents to file complaints in writing, retain stamped acknowledgement copies, and cross-check their survey reference numbers against the provisional lists posted outside the Dharavi Redevelopment Project office on Dharavi Main Road. The SRA's public grievance portal, accessible through the Maharashtra government's MAHA e-Seva platform, accepts scanned document uploads, which reduces the need for repeat in-person visits during the monsoon months. Residents with unresolved photograph discrepancies have until the close of the current objection window, provisionally set for 31 August 2026, to file corrections before lists are submitted for final government approval.