New Delhi: The Delhi Development Authority (DDA)’s much-awaited new housing scheme with 12,000 flats on offer will be rolled out on Friday, officials said on Thursday.

Top DDA officials said the scheme is slated to be launched by Union urban development minister M. Venkaiah Naidu at Vikas Sadan, the housing authority’s headquarters, on Friday afternoon.

“We are all set for the launch of the new scheme. Brochure for the scheme is ready. We have printed adequate number of copies. There are various logistical constraints involved in launching a scheme of this magnitude, so we wanted to ensure that everything was in order before going public," a senior official told PTI.

Out of the total number of flats, most of them are in Rohini, Dwarka, Narela, Vasant Kunj and Jasola. 10,000 unoccupied flats were from a 2014 housing scheme, while 2,000 flats had been lying vacant.

Seeking to deter “unserious buyers" and check market speculation, the DDA this time has proposed multi-tiered penal measures. “If a prospective buyer surrenders his application before the date of draws, no money will be deducted from his or her registration fee. If a buyer does so after the draw but before the issue of a demand letter, 25% of the registration fee will be forfeited," another official had earlier said. If the flat is surrendered within 90 days of the issue of the demand letter, 50% of the fee would be cut. “Beyond that time period, the entire registration fee will be forfeited," he said.

For the LIG (Lower Income Group) category, the registration fee will be Rs1 lakh while for Middle Income Group and High Income Group flats, Rs2 lakh will be charged.

The urban body has tied up with 10 banks for the sale of application forms and scheme-related transactions. The banks are Axis Bank, Yes Bank, IDBI, Bank of Baroda, Central Bank, SBI, Kotak Mahindra, HDFC, ICICI and Canara Bank.

“People are free to visit the areas where the flats are being offered. We have also removed the lock-in period clause, as we realised this was also a factor in buyers surrendering flats. This is also to keep a check on those elements who do market speculation," he said.

Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal, who is also the DDA chairman, had instructed senior officials to ensure that adequate public transport connectivity and other necessary basic infrastructure were put in place before the launch of the new scheme. Baijal has already given his approval to the scheme.

Under the rules, a husband and a wife can apply for the scheme but if both get an allotment, one of them will have to give it up.

Sources said most of the flats were one-bedroom LIG flats from the last housing scheme. “About 10,000 are LIG flats from the 2014 DDA scheme.

Unlike the EWS (Economically Weaker Section) category last time, in this scheme there will be no such category," the official said.

Application forms will be available both online and offline, he said.

The DDA this time has planned to put the scheme online —for forms for application, refund and so on —to reduce long queues of flat buyers at its headquarters.

The 2014 scheme offered 25,040 flats across categories, with prices ranging between Rs7 lakh and Rs1.2 crore. The online response was so massive that the DDA’s official website crashed soon after the launch. The one-bedroom flats were offered in Dwarka, Rohini, Narela and Siraspur areas.

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