Govt approves land pooling regulations

It aims at ensuring timely completion of real estate projects with all necessary infrastructure

Union Urban Development Ministry today approved the regulations for operationalisation of Land Pooling Policy of the Delhi Development Authority with five amendments, aiming at ensuring timely completion of real estate projects with all necessary infrastructure.

These changes are to ensure timely external development of necessary infrastructure by the DDA, help farmers in paying the development charges, ensure mandatory housing for economically weaker sections (EWS), transparency in allotment of returnable land and full utilisation of approved floor area ratio (FAR), a senior official of the Urban Development Ministry said.

Under the policy, the official said, the private sector would be responsible for assembling land which would then be made available to the DDA for redevelopment.

The DDA will be responsible for the overall planning and redevelopment of the land in a time-bound manner while encouraging the participation of the private sector.

This will help harness private potential in land assembly and infrastructure development and shift DDA's role to that of a facilitator, he said.

The redevelopment could range from constructing group-housing societies and providing infrastructure to the farmers.

The amendments to the regulations were proposed by the Urban Development Ministry in consultation with the DDA and were approved by the Urban Development Minister M Venkaiah Naidu.

According to the amendment, since any delay in completion of the development by Land Pooling Agency, DDA shall pay a penalty of 2 per cent of External Development Charges (EDC) per year for the first two years and 3 per cent of EDC per year thereafter to the Developer Entities (DE) (farmers/land owners) for delay beyond the date of completion of the construction by DE or five years whichever is later till the external development works are completed.

This ensures external development by DDA in time, which has not been the case so far.

Farmers who are willing to participate in land pooling but are unable to pay External Development Charges would be allowed to give up a part of the returnable residential land.

In such cases, they will get 35 per cent of the returnable residential land instead of 43 per cent. This option shall be exercised at the time of submission of applications for participation in land pooling.

Developer Entities (farmers/land owners participating in Land Pooling) shall mandatorily undertake construction of houses for EWS amounting to 15 per cent FAR over and above the maximum permissible residential FAR (400 per cent).

The EWS housing will be constructed as an independent block.

The Developer Entities shall ensure that entire FAR for residential purposes shall be utilised.

The DDA shall devise a computerised system for prioritising applications received for allocation of plots of returnable land based on computerised algorithm on the basis of month-wise grouping to ensure transparency.