After 34-Year Delay, DDA Allots Homes To 1,073 Applicants

Nearly three-and-a-half decades after it launched a housing scheme to rehabilitate people belonging to the economically weaker sections (EWS), the Delhi government on July 25, 2019, conducted a draw of lots to allot flats to those applicants who had been put on the waiting list at that time. Media reports say about 27,000 people had applied for homes under the scheme in 1985, with the Delhi Development Authority (DDA), by paying a registration fee of Rs 3,000 each. Of these, 19,000 were put in the wait-list.

Owing to the changes of ownership that the slum wing of the DDA underwent, the project was kept in the cold storage. While the DDA slum wing was transferred to the Municipal Corporation of Delhi in 1993, the Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board (DUSIB) got its charge in 2010. After several applicants moved court, the DUSIB revised the project in 2018. The flats have been built by the DUSIB on a group housing pattern. "The scheme will provide houses to 1,073 applicants, who have shown their willingness to accept allotment at Savda Ghewra, Nangloi areas," an official statement read.

When the advertisement for the scheme was published in 1985, the quoted cost of an individual unit was Rs 35,000. This has now been revised to Rs 12.5 lakhs. Applicants have been given three months, to deposit the amount after which they would be granted the possession of the flats. The substantial increase in unit cost is being attributed as the reason behind the muted response the scheme has received. “In the last few months, we have published at least six advertisements in Hindi newspapers to reach out to the applicants. So far, only 1,150 have contacted us, accepting allotment of tenements,” a DUSIB official was quoted in a media report in June 2019.