Mankhurd Collapse Raises A Bigger Question: Why Is Mumbai Still Struggling With Unsafe Housing?

Shortly after 8:30 pm on Sunday, July 5, 2026, a ground-plus-three storey structure in Chawl No. 5, Janata Nagar, Mankhurd, collapsed onto a neighbouring hut as heavy rain lashed the area. Six people were killed, including five children, and one person sustained injuries. Multiple agencies — the NDRF, Mumbai Fire Brigade, police, and local BMC ward staff — deployed to the site. By the next morning, the Mankhurd police had registered a case of culpable homicide.

BMC officials confirmed that the collapsed structure had been built on Collector land and was entirely illegal. The FIR named the building owner, the contractor, the hut owner, and private and government officials alleged to have knowingly facilitated the construction.

This was the fifth monsoon-related death in Mumbai in a single week. An 11-year-old had died when a tree fell on a school bus in Chembur. A man fell into an open manhole in Sakinaka. A teenager was killed by a falling tree branch in Aarey Colony. A resident in a MHADA cessed building in Walkeshwar died when the balcony collapsed.

The Rehabilitation Backlog

Every year before the monsoon, the BMC publishes a list of dangerous and dilapidated buildings and issues evacuation notices. Every year, a significant number of those notices go unheeded because residents have no viable alternative housing and nowhere to go. MHADA announced in 2025 that it would conduct structural audits of 1,000 cessed buildings by March 2025, with the goal of identifying which require immediate evacuation, repairs, or complete redevelopment.

Cessed buildings are structures built before 1969 whose residents pay a small cess to MHADA for maintenance and repair. Many are 60 to 80 years old, with weakened materials, high population density, and redevelopment plans stuck for years in disputes between tenants, landlords, and developers.

In South Mumbai's older neighbourhoods, the cessed building problem is a known and documented crisis. In the eastern suburbs, the informal settlement problem is its equivalent, less documented, less regulated, and at least as dangerous.

Encroachments and Unauthorised Structures

The Govandi-Mankhurd area — falling under the BMC's M-East ward — is routinely flagged as the ward with the worst urban indicators in the city. It has the highest concentration of informal settlements, and some of the most densely packed unauthorised vertical construction in Mumbai.

“Even though the houses stand on Collector’s land, the government cannot easily act on them. The BMC has the power of enforcement, while state agencies lack the manpower to control these issues. As a result, there has been years of correspondence between departments, but very little action on the ground,” a state government official told The Indian Express.

Also, split authority between BMC, the district Collector's office, the Slum Rehabilitation Authority, and state housing bodies creates a default setting in which illegal structures stand for years without any single agency assuming full responsibility for their removal.

Weak Foundations And Flooding

Much of Mumbai's eastern and northern periphery, where land is cheapest and regulation weakest, was historically marshy, reclaimed, or prone to waterlogging. Mankhurd, Govandi, and Trombay sit close to Thane Creek on land with limited natural load-bearing capacity. Structures built on such terrain without proper foundation engineering are disproportionately vulnerable to water table changes during sustained heavy monsoon rainfall.

The collapse on July 5 occurred as Mumbai received between 150 mm and 170 mm of rain over 24 hours, with wind speeds reaching 72 to 75 km/h triggering 142 tree-fall incidents across Greater Mumbai. These are not unusual monsoon conditions for Mumbai. A city housing millions of people in structures built on marginal land, without engineering oversight, will produce fatalities in every monsoon at those rainfall levels.

Why Relocation Is Difficult

The single biggest obstacle to resolving Mumbai's unsafe housing problem is not regulation — it is the absence of viable alternatives. Slum dwellers and chawl residents in areas like Mankhurd cannot simply move because the BMC issues an evacuation notice. Transit camps, where they exist, are themselves overcrowded and poorly maintained. Rental markets in safer parts of the city are unaffordable for daily wage workers. And leaving a neighbourhood means losing proximity to livelihoods, schools, and social networks built over decades.

According to a report by the Free Press Journal, The Govandi New Sangam Welfare Society, in a representation to the Maharashtra Chief Minister after the Mankhurd collapse, called for a permanent statutory disaster management authority, annual vulnerability audits, and accountability from elected representatives including MPs, MLAs, and municipal councillors through quarterly public inspections of civic assets and dilapidated buildings.

Lessons From Previous Collapses

Mumbai has had building collapses in every monsoon for decades. The Bhiwandi chawl collapse of 2020 killed 39 people. The Malad wall collapse in 2019 killed 28. The Dongri building collapse in the same year killed 13 in the oldest parts of South Mumbai. Each produced official investigations, political statements, promises of demolition drives, and expedited rehabilitation schemes. Each was followed, within months, by a return to the status quo.

What the cycle reveals is not a failure of response — Mumbai's disaster management machinery now mobilises quickly, with NDRF deployed within hours — but a failure of prevention. Activists have criticised what they call a reactive approach, calling instead for annual vulnerability audits and structural assessments of all high-risk buildings before the monsoon, not after the deaths.

The shift from disaster response to disaster prevention would require sustained political will to demolish structures, to rehouse people before rather than after a collapse, and to resolve the jurisdictional overlaps that allow illegal construction to proliferate on land nobody is clearly accountable for. The Mankhurd collapse of July 5, 2026, like the collapses before it, will not be the last unless that shift happens.