If stamp duty documents are to be believed, Bollywood superstar Salman Khan's new address is the costliest in the country.
According to papers recently made public yesterday, the actor has coughed up Rs 1.85 lakh per square foot for the apartment in a building named ‘The Address', located on Bullock Cart Road, Bandstand, at a stones' throw away from Mannat, the mansion owned by arch-rival Shah Rukh Khan.
This is without a doubt the highest amount ever paid per square foot for any flat in the city. The ready reckoner rates for the area is between Rs 30, 000 and Rs 40, 000 per square foot. Advocate and former IPS officer Y P Singh yesterday made public the stamp duty documents that reveal that the actor is buying the 1, 079-sq-ft apartment for a whopping Rs 20 crore.
Salman incidentally also owns a flat in another building in Bandstand called ‘Galaxy', which is his present home. Singh claimed that for this apartment too, Salman had paid Rs 1.6 crore towards stamp duty (‘Sanju and Sallu pay Rs 27 crore for a triplex flat each in Bandra', MiD DAY, September 2009).
Singh alleged that Salman has paid about five times over the ready reckoner rates of the area.
"Why would anyone pay five times over the existing rate of the area?" questioned Singh. Singh stressed on the need to interrogate if Salman had violated any rules and purchased area earmarked for common use. Brokers, however, shrugged off the matter, claiming that this is nothing new.
A broker from Bandra said, "It's a triplex flat — generally, builders don't opt for registration of the super built up area, but charge customers for it. This is not a new phenomenon — if you calculate on the basis of carpet area alone, there would be many flats in Mumbai costing Rs 2 lakh per square foot."
In spite of repeated attempts to get Salman's version, the actor remained