The Hindu : New Delhi News : Private players set to play major role in housing sector

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Jul 20, 2005

New Delhi

New Delhi

Private players set to play major role in housing sector

Staff Reporter

Will supplement DDA bid to meet residential needs of an additional 90 lakh people by 2021

NEW DELHI: The Delhi Development Authority has proposed a number of steps for facilitating private participation in construction of mega housing projects in the Capital.

The private sector is all set to play a major role in supplementing housing construction in Delhi in order to meet the residential needs of an additional 90 lakh people due to make the Capital their home by 2021.

Outlining the details, the Vice-Chairman of DDA, Madhukar Gupta, said since often projects get delayed to lack of zonal plans, efforts are being made to prepare these plans by the end of the year to coincide with the notification of the Master Plan 2021 of which the scheme is a part. Alongside DDA would be setting a time limit for provision of peripheral infrastructure and a committee or monitoring body would be formed before the plan takes shape.

The approved proposals will also be monitored regularly and there will be penalty clause to ensure strict adherence to the plans.

Further, DDA will determine if it would licence or registered the developers to help construction.

Single window clearance

Also, it would seek to provide single-window clearance to the developers both within its own departments and also help the developers get clearances from other departments like PWD, MCD, DJB for water, electricity, sewage and other works.

"The idea is to keep the dealings simple, transparent, time-bound and to provide a one-window mechanism," said Mr Gupta.

Better convergence between infrastructure and planning and between DDA and the private developers, he hoped, will help solve the housing shortage in the Capital.

Free units for DDA

On the gains from the plan, he said, not only would it provide an additional pool of housing to the people, it would also add to the housing pool of DDA as a number of EWS units would be constructed free of cost for DDA by the developers.

Most importantly, the private participation would bring in additional resources and diversification in the field of design and planning.

Earlier, the Authority meeting at which the proposal was approved in principle, it was also decided that the power to bring about a change in land use for the projects would rest with the Authority alone and would not be delegated to the Vice-Chairman as was sought.

This the DDA Member, Virender Kasana, said was done since otherwise it would have put a lot of discretionary power in the hands of Vice-Chairman and posed problems like those witnessed in the case of former incumbent, Subhash Sharma, who was arrested by CBI in a land scam case.

During the meeting, another Member, Mahabal Mishra, raised the issue of DDA employees and their relatives being denied the fundamental right of being part of cooperative group housing societies being allotted land by DDA in Delhi. At this the Lieutenant-Governor, B.L. Joshi, directed that the matter be reviewed.

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