Note ban woes? DDA housing scheme gets only 8,000 applications for LIG flats

Senior DDA officials said that demonetisation could be a factor behind fewer people applying

house, construction, real estate, home, building — Budgetary support to PMAY, a refurbished version of the erstwhile IAY, has increased by 127 per cent under the NDA government, to Rs 23,000 crore in 2017-18 from Rs 10,116 crore a year ago

Last Updated : Sep 08 2017 | 2:08 PM IST

The Delhi Development Authority's (DDA's) 2017 housing scheme has managed to garner only 22,000 applicaions, with just four days left for the deadline, compared to the over 1 million applications it had received for its last housing scheme, which it launched in September 2014, the Financial Express reported on Friday while citing a senior DDA official.

According to the official cited by the report, of the applications received, only 8,000 were for lower-income group (LIG) houses even though more than 11,000 of the 12,000 houses on offer under the scheme fell in the LIG category.

Speaking to the financial daily, the official said, "Final data will be known by September 11. The number of applications may rise in the last two-three days, as people usually submit applications in the last days."

Demonetisation to blame?

As reported earlier, as on July 29, 2017, the DDA had received around only 5,000 applications for its housing scheme, with senior officials conjecturing that demonetisation could be a factor behind fewer people applying for it.

The 2017 Housing Scheme, which offers 12,000 flats for four income categories, was launched on June 30. The last date for submitting applications is September 11. The initial deadline for submission was August 11, but DDA authorities had extended it by a month, following poor response from people till July-end.

The draw of the lots is slated to be conducted in the first week of November and could be streamed online.

"50,000 forms have been sold so far, which is less, but we are waiting and watching as of now," DDA's Principal Commissioner (Housing) J P Agarwal had told news agency PTI back in July.

"One of the reasons for low number of application could be due to the impact of demonetisation. The entire market is down, including the real estate sector," another senior official of the DDA had said back then.

According to agency reports, the flats are spread across Rohini, Dwarka, Narela, Vasant Kunj, Jasola, Pitampura, Paschim Vihar, and Siraspur.

Of the 12,000 flats, around 10,000 unoccupied ones are from the 2014 housing scheme, while 2,000 have been lying vacant.

The price of flats ranges from close to Rs 7 lakh to over Rs 1.26 crore.