Fifty-five years after Maharashtra enacted its slum redevelopment law with the promise of improving living conditions and eventually making cities slum-free, the Bombay High Court recently observed that the goal of “slum extinction” had remained only a “dream on paper”. OMKAR GOKHALE explains why the court made these observations and the steps it has proposed to address the crisis. The judgment was delivered by a special bench of Justices Girish S Kulkarni and Advait M Sethna in a suo motu plea initiated after the Supreme Court, in July 2024, asked for a review of the implementation of the Maharashtra Slum Areas (Improvement, Clearance and Redevelopment) Act, 1971. The HC described the exercise as a “one-of-its-kind” review because instead of merely examining the constitutional validity of the law, it evaluated how the legislation had functioned in practice over the decades and where it had fallen short. Q) What does the 1971 Slum Act provide?…