The Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (Mhada) told the Bombay high court on Wednesday that it was yet to recover 13,126 square meters of constructed area from the redevelopers of 50 cessed buildings in the island city. Mhada’s lawyer told the court that criminal complaints had been filed against 29 developers, who had failed to hand over the surplus area. He said show cause notices were issued to four other developers who were at fault. The lawyer told a division bench of justices Naresh Patil and Nitin Sambre that Mhada has received 31,326 sqm in connection wtih 153 projects involving the redevelopment of cessed buildings, and Rs38 crore by way of premium towards lesser surrendered areas. He said the housing authority expects to receive 90,258 sqm from 150 redevelopment projects that are ongoing, and 46,481 sqm from 106 projects that are yet to start. He was responding to a public interest litigation filed by a Mumbaiite Kamlakar Shenoy, who said Mhada officials had deliberately not taken possession of 2.70 lakh sqm constructed area, which according to him, is valued at Rs14,000 crore. His lawyer, advocate Chaitanya Pendse, explained that for redevelopment of every cessed building — old tenanted buildings in Mumbai city — additional floor space index (FSI) is provided to the builder to make the redevelopment commercially viable. Against this, Mhada also gets prescribed share in terms of constructed area in these buildings. Pendse said Mhada officials deliberately did not take possession of the authority’s share in these redeveloped buildings. He said they did this purportedly to cause undue benefit to the developers, thereby causing wrongful loss to the authority. According to an affidavit filed by the Economic Offences Wing (EOW), so far 457 projects have been approved for redevelopment of cessed buildings under which Mhada was supposed to get 1,98,646 sqm of constructed area. Out of these, 149 projects are complete and Mhada has already received 37,292 sqm of constructed area and compensation of Rs37.54 crores, the affidavit adds. It states that substantial portion of the Mhada share — 1,41,803 square meters — is to come from 260 projects which are either on-going or stalled because of various reasons.