The Hindu : New Delhi News : DDA sets the ball rolling for Games

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Mar 30, 2005

New Delhi

New Delhi

DDA sets the ball rolling for Games

By Our staff Reporter

NEW DELHI, MARCH 29. The meeting of the Delhi Development Authority, chaired by its Chairman and Lieutenant-Governor of Delhi, B.L. Joshi, today approved its Budget for 2005-06 which besides allocating funds for increased acquisition and development of land, housing stock and infrastructure development has set the ball rolling for the Commonwealth Games 2010 by allocating a sum of Rs 30 lakhs for study of the various provisions by the Event Knowledge Services of the Commonwealth Games. As per the Budget, the projected receipts and expenditure of DDA for the year have been pegged at Rs 2,405.39 crores and Rs 2,404.61 crores respectively. During the meeting, the members raised concerns about rising prices of DDA flats and demanded that the percentage increase every year should be nominal. They also sought lowering of the interest rate paid as penalty by DDA. While this rate was earlier 18 per cent and has been lowered to 15 per cent, the members demanded that it be lowered further to reduce the burden on the Authority.

Announcing the Budget, the Vice-Chairman of DDA, Madhukar Gupta, said DDA has undertaken massive land development programmes at Rohini, Jasola, Dwarka and Narela to meet the increasing demand for residential, industrial, commercial and institutional land. For the purpose, he said a provision of Rs 832.87 crores has been made compared to the expenditure of Rs 729.81 crores in the revised budget estimate of 2004-05.

The development agency has also creased the allocation for the greens. Mr Gupta said "to provide healthy and open environment, DDA has laid emphasis on development, maintenance, beautification and upgradation of existing greens besides the development of new greens and so Rs 176.49 crores have been set aside for the purpose as against Rs 165.53 crores in 2004-05.

The Budget for construction of houses and shops has also been increased by around Rs 40 crores and has been pegged at Rs 466.42 crores, he said, adding that at the beginning of this financial year 23,016 houses were at various stages of construction.

The Authority today also approved the plan forwarded by Delhi Metro Rail Corporation to extend the Metro line from Sector 9 in Dwarka to Sector 22 in the sub-city. The proposal, which is part of Phase II of the project, would now be sent to the Centre for its approval. Noting that DDA will co-finance the extension of the Metro line to Dwarka, Mr Gupta said for this the Government of India has approved Rs 320 crores to be paid to DMRC and out of this Rs 240 crores will be financed by DDA.

The Budget has also made a provision of Rs 59.10 crores for construction of Master Plan roads. Incidentally, during the year DDA and the Government of India had also finalised and approved the draft Master Plan for Delhi 2021 for publication. And among the new policy initiatives in the plan are the involvement of private sector in the assembly and development of land and in the development of housing and shelter.

Later, addressing a press conference, the Member (Finance), A.K. Patnaik, said DDA was also heading towards e-governance as the entire department would be computerised in the next 15 months to streamline transactions and make them fast. An agreement has been signed with the Software Technology Park of India for the comprehensive computerisation of DDA that will include an Integrated Management System and for this purpose a budgetary provision of Rs 12 crores has been made.

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