The Neville D’souza Football Ground in Bandra Reclamation remains at the centre of a dispute over its proposed conversion into a convention centre. The Bombay High Court has directed the BMC to maintain the status quo, while concerns grow over the wider conversion of Mumbai’s reserved open spaces for commercial development.

The Neville D’souza Football Ground at Bandra Reclamation is at the centre of a dispute over its proposed conversion into a convention centre | AI Generated Image

The Neville D’souza Football Ground in Mumbai’s Bandra Reclamation may have been saved, for a brief time, from the clutches of the land sharks of Mumbai both within the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) and outside it, thanks to the intervention of the Bombay High Court. However, the possibility that it will still be converted into a convention and exhibition centre is not closed.

The 8,450-square-metre ground has been in the throes of a tug-of-war since June, when the BMC sought to change its reservation from playground to convention centre.

The Mumbai Football Association approached the High Court, which asked to maintain the status quo. Despite this, on August 18, the BMC general body approved the conversion. The HC then directed the BMC to refrain from taking any further steps.

Open Spaces Under Threat

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At stake is not only the football ground in Mumbai of professional size and turf, used regularly, but also the future of several reserved plots being similarly handed over for real estate development with merely a change in reservation.

Reports are that the BMC changed the reservation of 17 land parcels across Mumbai in only four years, 14 of them between 2023 and 2025, when the civic body was run by the state government. These were reserved for gardens, parks, and natural open spaces.

Indeed, what, or who, will make the BMC realise that it is only a custodian, not the landowner in totality, of public land and that Mumbai needs open spaces more than ever? At just about a square metre per person, Mumbai has the least open space in the world for an international city. Where will the young go to play?

Commercial Interests Vs Public Need

The young and old of Mumbai have come out to fight for this ground, as the youth of India did for other causes, but that seems to matter not a whit. That the BMC sees every open space as a potential plot for commercial exploitation is an open secret, but it commits severe dereliction of duty in always putting commercial interests above those of public open spaces.

After every plot has been built upon and building densities increased beyond the carrying capacity of the city, what will the BMC do? This ground, named after Neville D’souza, the first Asian player to score a hat-trick in an Olympic football match in the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, is listed as a playground in the BMC’s Development Plan 2034.

But it is a part of the MHADA layout in Bandra Reclamation now up for redevelopment worth lakhs of crores; in the MHADA plan, it is shown as a convention centre. In the redevelopment plans, helmed by real estate giants, this plot is seen purely as a commercial space. Unless the HC comes down harshly, the rank commercialisation of Mumbai’s land is unlikely to stop.

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