Government turns builder to give Delhi a new look

In the next couple of years, India’s capital will sport a new look with the government taking its role as builder seriously.

Construction work for the Commonwealth Games is just the beginning. The biggest project is — unsurprisingly — the construction of 500 ministerial bungalows over 123 acres of land at New Moti Bagh.

National Buildings Construction Corporation Limited (NBCC) won the bid ahead of the Central Public Works Department (CPWD) because the government wanted the constructor to finance the entire project.

NBCC came up with the idea of acquiring 10 per cent of the 123 acres to construct a commercial complex and build the ministerial bungalows in return.

“The government is now open to the idea of making builders like us construct ministerial bungalows because they want the project to be delivered on time. Also, the government didn’t have funds for the project, so we came up with the idea of building them at our own cost and taking some land to build a commercial complex in return,” said Arup Roy Choudhury, chairman and managing director, NBCC.

NBCC has already delivered 50 bungalows and the rest are expected to be completed in a year.

Choudhury added, “Players like CPWD are quite understaffed so most of their projects suffer time overruns overtime, so the government is looking for fresh bidders who can have accountability.”

But that hasn’t stopped CPWD from taking on some big projects such as the Jawahar Lal Nehru Bhawan, the office for the ministry of external affairs, situated in the crossing of Maulana Azad road and Janpath. Covering 7.78 acres of land, the total built-up area will be 58.28 sq.m. This state-of-the art building will be one of the central government’s green initiatives.

CPWD is also constructing an office complex near Delhi’s landmark INA. The office will have six blocks and one of the blocks is earmarked for the office of the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC). The area covering this project is 7.64 acres and the fund sanctioned by the government was Rs 83.67 crore, which has now been revised to Rs 135 crores.

Another CPWD project is the General Pool Office Accommodation (GPOA) in Shahadra covering 1.90 acre of land at a cost of Rs 43 crore.

The government is also planning a commercial complex in Kidwai Nagar, though no details are available. M Ramachandran, secretary, Ministry of Urban Development confirmed this, but did declined to provide details.

The Delhi Development Authority (DDA) is also not far behind. It is expected to announce a mega housing scheme next month, where almost 15,000 flats will be up for grabs. The houses will be constructed mostly in Jasola, Narela, Vasant Kunj and Dwarka. Out of this, 8,000 are expected to be ready by June-July this year.

In the next four years, DDA plans to build 42,000 flats and in this year’s Budget the agency has funds to the tune of Rs 1,470 crore to build only residential units.

Apart from residential, commercial and office complexes, the Delhi state government is also building six new parking spaces and has commissioned C&C Constructions for the project. The areas covered in this will be Subhash Nagar, Rajouri Garden, Hauz Khas, Gandhi Nagar, Model Town 2 and Munirka. The project is worth Rs 170 crore.

“We got the contract to build six parking spaces and four of these will be completed before the Commonwealth games in October 2010, the remaining two will be delivered by December 2010. Each parking space will be able to accommodate 300 to 900 cars and will be a totally underground project,” said G S Johar, chairman, C&C Construction Ltd.