Transferable development rights are how Maharashtra pays for public land without paying cash. The mechanism is simple to state and full of conditions, and the conditions are where the money is.
Key takeaways
- TDR compensates land under reservations for public purposes, new roads and road widening, proposed in a draft or final Development Plan and subject to acquisition.
- It is not available where compensation has already been paid by any means, where a valid acquisition award already exists, or where a sanctioned layout already incorporated the roads.
- Utilisation is barred outright in five categories of receiving area, including agricultural and green zones, the blue flood line, the coastal regulation zone and Koregaon Park in Pune.
- Where an amenity space is handed over under Regulation 3.5, the owner may take in-situ FSI or TDR, but only after the transfer is complete.
- Accommodation reservation under Regulation 11.1 is the alternative: the owner develops the reservation rather than being compensated for losing it.
Three ways a reservation gets settled
Chapter 11, Regulation 11.0, UDCPR as updated 30 January 2025 applies these regulations to areas within the jurisdiction of planning authorities unless otherwise specified, and Chapter 11 then offers three routes for land the Development Plan has earmarked for a public purpose.
Chapter 11, Regulation 11.1, Manner of Development of Reserved Site in Development Plan (Accommodation Reservation Principle)* is the accommodation reservation principle: the owner develops the reserved site themselves, for the purpose it is reserved for, on the terms in Table 11-A, and keeps development potential in exchange. The regulation adds a condition worth noting, that where an owner is allowed to develop a reservation they should have exclusive ownership and title to the land without restriction under any other Act.
Chapter 11, Regulation 11.2, Regulations for Grant of Transferable Development Rights is the second route: the land goes, and rights come back.
Chapter 11, Regulation 11.3, Reservation Credit Certificate (RCC) is the third: the land goes and a Reservation Credit Certificate comes back instead, compensation that can be spent only on charges payable to the Authority, such as development charges, premium and property tax. The rest of this article is about the second route.
What earns TDR
A TDR certificate works like a credit note. The Authority takes the land and issues a note denominated in floor area, which can be spent on another plot. A credit note is only issued against a real transaction, which is what the eligibility rule and its exclusions police, and not every counter accepts one, which is what the restricted list is for.
Chapter 11, Regulation 11.2.2, UDCPR as updated 30 January 2025 is the eligibility rule, and it is narrower than the way people talk about TDR suggests.
Compensation in the form of TDR is permissible for lands under various reservations for public purposes, new roads and road widening, which are subject to acquisition and proposed in a draft or final Development Plan prepared under the Maharashtra Regional and Town Planning Act, 1966.
Three qualifiers there do real work. The land must be under a reservation or road proposal, it must be subject to acquisition, and the proposal must be in a draft or final Development Plan rather than in an intention or a discussion.
What does not
Chapter 11, Regulation 11.2.3, UDCPR as updated 30 January 2025 is where a valuation goes wrong if it is skipped.
| Circumstance | Why TDR is not available |
|---|---|
| Compensation already paid, partly or fully, by any means, for an earlier acquisition or development | The land has already been paid for once |
| An award of land already declared and valid under the acquisition legislation | Unless the land is withdrawn from the award by the appropriate authority under the relevant Acts |
| A layout already sanctioned with the layout roads incorporated into it | The roads were part of the bargain when the layout was approved |
The third exclusion is the one that catches buyers of part-developed land. A sanctioned layout that already incorporated its internal roads has spent that entitlement, and Regulation 3.3.11 separately provides that internal layout roads may be called in by the Authority and handed over by deed without compensation.
So on a layout that has been through sanction, the roads are neither an asset to be sold nor a source of TDR. A seller presenting road area as recoverable value is describing something Regulation 11.2.3(iii) has already dealt with.
The five places it cannot land
Chapter 11, Regulation 11.2.8, UDCPR as updated 30 January 2025 restricts where TDR may be used, and the list is absolute rather than discretionary.
- Agricultural, no development, green zone, green belt, regional park, HTHS zone and biodiversity park reservations on the Development Plan.
- The area within the flood control line, that is the blue line prohibitive zone, as specified by the Irrigation Department.
- The coastal regulation zone.
- Any area with a development prohibition or restriction imposed by a notification under a Central or State Act, such as CRZ regulations or defence restriction areas, or under these regulations.
- The Koregaon Park area in Pune Municipal Corporation.
The fifth entry is the only place in Chapter 11 that names a single neighbourhood, and it connects to Pune's own city chapter, where Koregaon Park is one of two pockets capped at 21 m in height.
That pairing is the useful lesson about how this code works. A height cap in Chapter 10 and a TDR bar in Chapter 11 are two different instruments aimed at the same piece of ground, and reading either one alone would leave a developer with a plan that fails on the other.
Generation, and where the certificate comes from
Chapter 11, Regulation 11.2.4, Generation of the Transferable Development Rights (TDR)* is the provision the city chapters keep pointing at. Both Nagpur's 10.3.6 and NMRDA's 10.4.5 borrow it for encumbered land needed urgently for a public purpose, using the same structure: a fully encumbered parcel earns TDR equivalent to the area taken over, a partly encumbered one earns the vacant portion under this regulation and the encumbered portion by area, and the two must be separately certified through a joint measurement survey with the city survey officer, failing which the whole is treated as fully encumbered.
Amenity space is the other common source. Under Regulation 3.5, where the Authority takes over the 5 percent amenity space on a layout of 20,000 sq m or more, the owner may take in-situ FSI on the remaining land or, if preferred, TDR. Either is granted only after the transfer of the amenity space to the Authority is complete.
What to check before pricing TDR into a deal
Names and numbers in this story are illustrative. Iqbal loads TDR onto his Thane projects, and on one of his three sites he nearly paid for rights that part of the land could not take. That site runs along a creek, and the stretch inside the coastal regulation zone falls in one of the five categories Regulation 11.2.8 rules out.
The certificate he was offered was sound. The question was never whether the TDR was valid but whether that part of his plot could receive it, and that is a test to run before paying for rights rather than after.
- Confirm the reservation is in a draft or final Development Plan, not merely proposed or discussed.
- Check whether compensation was ever paid for this land in any form, because that closes the route under 11.2.3(i).
- Check for a live acquisition award, and whether the land has been withdrawn from it.
- On a sanctioned layout, treat the roads as already accounted for.
- Test the receiving plot against the five restricted categories before assuming rights can be landed there, then read the FSI rulebook for how much may be loaded.
Where the filings come in
TDR is settled between an owner and a Planning Authority, so it does not appear in the public register directly. What the register does show is the outcome: the projects that were actually built, their filed land areas, and their declared building potential.
Two counts from it bear on this article. Of the 55,995 published MahaRERA projects as updated on 29 September 2026, 16 name Koregaon Park in their filed address, the one neighbourhood Regulation 11.2.8 names. And of the 55,972 that file a land area, 1,801 file 20,000 sq m or more, the size from which Regulation 3.5 asks for amenity space, and so the size at which the in-situ FSI or TDR described above can arise.
Every MahaRERA filing at reragenie.com is free to read and carries the filed land area, the buildings and their floors, the promoter's extension history with the stated reasons, the certifying professionals, and any complaints or litigation with case numbers.
ReraGenie's project analysis, Rs 2,999 for one project, reads a project's full filing and sets the promoter's record against the rest of the register. The area market report reads every registration in one pincode together, for a flat Rs 2,999. If you are tracking where development is going next, sign up on ReraGenie for an email whenever a new project is registered in the areas you choose, free during the pilot beta.
For the city chapters that add their own TDR and premium arrangements on top of Chapter 11, see CIDCO and Panvel and Navi Mumbai.
Source: Unified Development Control and Promotion Regulations for Maharashtra, UDCPR as updated 30 January 2025. Sanctioned under the Maharashtra Regional and Town Planning Act, 1966.
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