They will not have their belongings thrown out on to the road – not yet – but Indian former MPs who lost their seats at the last election have been told that if they fail to vacate their official bungalows within a week, the gas, electricity and water will be cut off.

About 200 grand bungalows in the heart of Delhi, part of an area built as the capital of the British Raj, are still occupied by ex-MPs who should have left the residences within a month of the last parliament being dissolved on 25 May.

A parliamentary housing committee was forced to issue the stern warning as incoming MPs, keen to grab one of the nicest perks of the job, are still living in rented accommodation, their suitcases packed and with nowhere to go.

There are fewer places more pleasing to live in Delhi than the Lutyens zone, named after a British architect, Sir Edwin Lutyens, who designed and built many of the official buildings during the Raj in the 1930s and 1940s. The zone includes almost 2,000 highly coveted bungalows, overwhelmingly held in state hands.

The broad, leafy avenues here are lined with white colonial bungalows featuring porticoes and arches, high ceilings, spacious rooms and forbidding perimeter walls. The quarters for the servants alone are vast and the gardens are the size of public parks.

Some MPs and politicians have remained illegal occupants for years and residents can go to great lengths to stay on. One favourite ruse is for the offspring of a dead MP or minister to turn the bungalow into a “memorial” to justify the family remaining in place. Others insist security threats necessitate keeping one of the well-appointed residences, while one option is just to wait for a forced removal.

Rajpath, a ceremonial boulevard in New Delhi. Photograph: Tibor Bognar/Alamy

In 2013 the estranged wife of a Kashmir politician refused to move out of the bungalow allotted to her husband, who was not even living in it. Three years later a Delhi high court judge asked her: “Will you gracefully vacate or should I pass an order?” When she refused, the police forcibly evicted her.

Last year a former Uttar Pradesh chief minister had to be served an eviction order before she grudgingly vacated her bungalow.

Some politicians have been more willing to move on. When the former finance minister Arun Jaitley asked Narendra Modi, the prime minister, to relieve him of his ministerial job on account of ill health, he could justifiably have stayed on in his official bungalow as a member of the upper house. But the moment he relinquished his post, he moved out.

Incoming MPs may find that previous occupants showed scant regard for the architectural integrity of the bungalows. Over the years, MPs across the political spectrum have given many bungalows additions including plyboard partitions, sheds covered with corrugated plastic and extra toilets.