DDA extends new housing scheme submission dateline to Oct 15

After receiving an overwhelming response to its new housing scheme and due to intervening festive season, DDA has extended the last date of submission of application form to October 15, a senior official of the housing authority said today.

The 'DDA Housing Scheme 2014', offering over 25,000 flats across various categories, was launched on September 1 and the last date earlier was October 9.

"We received a massive response to our scheme since its launch. But, many people came in person and requested for extension of the deadline as there was also an intervening period of festive season and 'pitra paksh' during which people were not able to apply," DDA spokesperson Neemo Dhar told PTI.

She said that out of 20 lakh brochures printed for the scheme, "about 17 lakh have been sold through our counters and various empanelled bank branches".

"Out of the sold forms, we have received about 3 lakh so far, with a lakh forms being received yesterday only. As has been a trend, about 75 per cent people submit form in the last three days, so we are anticipating a rush around the new submission deadline," Dhar said.

The Delhi Development Authority took the decision today and has for the draw, kept a "tentative date of November 5".

"The draw would be overseen by a three-member team headed by a retired high court judge. It would also have two IT professionals, one from IIT-Delhi and another from the National Informatics Centre (NIC) to supervise the draw," she said.

DDA in its last scheme (DDA Housing Scheme 2010') had commissioned C-DAC (Centre for Development of Advanced Computing) as a vendor to execute its draw, but so far it has not decided on the vendor for this year, she said.

The IT department of the DDA has also planned to ramp up its website during the closing scheme time and during the draw, to cope with the heavy traffic of online users.

The procedure for the draw has also been uploaded on the website.

"We have also opened up a suggestion/feedback box on our website," Dhar said.

The DDA website had crashed within a few hours of its launch on September 1, prompting authorities to upgrade its server to meet the "exponentially increased user traffic".

In its first two days, the website had received 18 lakh hits with 11 lakh hits on a single day.

It has so far received over 3.3 million hits since the launch of the flagship programme.

DDA recently had also posted an online video guide for filling up of the form.