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Updated: Feb 25, 2019 23:03 IST

More than 1,000 Delhi Development Authority (DDA) apartments in the middle- and high-income categories (MIG and HIG) will be available for Delhi residents after a gap of nearly a decade as the authority gets ready to launch a housing scheme offering a total of 10,300 newly built flats in Vasant Kunj and Narela.

The scheme was approved on Monday at an authority meeting chaired by Delhi’s lieutenant governor (LG) Anil Baijal.

Of the 10,300 flats, 8,383 are in the lower income group (LIG) category, 579 MIG, 448 HIG and 960 in the economically weaker section (EWS ) category. All the MIG and HIG flats are in Vasant Kunj, which began as a DDA colony in the early ’90s and has blossomed over the years into one of the city’s most sought-after localities.

While DDA is yet to finalise the dates of its 2019 offering, officials said that a draw of lots is likely in May or June, and allotments should begin from July. Though the landowning agency is in the process of finalising the cost of flats in each category, a senior official said the cost of MIG and HIG flats is likely to between Rs 70 lakh and Rs 2 crore.

An MIG flat typically has two-bedroom and is between 60 and 70 square metres (650-750 square feet) in size. An HIG flat is usually a three-bedroom flats over 90 square metres (970 square feet) in size.

The last time DDA offered such high number of HIG and MIG flats was in 2010, when 2,300 HIG and MIG flats were offered in Mukherjee Nagar, Dwarka, Rohini, Pitampura and Motia Khan. In 2014, 496 MIG flats were on offer in Narela, but about 300 of these were returned by the allottees citing poor civic infrastructure.

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The 2019 scheme will be the first time that the entire process, including the submission of applications and all financial transactions will be done online. “We will only accept applications online. For this, we will set up facility centres to assist people in filling applications online and carry out other financial transactions. We will launch the scheme by March 2 and will soon inform about the important dates,” said DDA vice-chairman Tarun Kapoor.

DDA has also decided to do away with a key clause under which people who owned a DDA flat couldn’t apply for new schemes. “Now, people who own a DDA flats can also apply, but their flat size has to be up to 67 square metres. We have also scrapped the five-year lock in period, except for the EWS category,” Kapoor said.

The decision has been taken after the failure of DDA’s last two housing schemes in 2014 and 2017, in which more than 12,000 and 8,000 flats respectively -- all in the LIG and “one-bedroom” categories, many of them in Narela -- were returned by allottees because of the extremely small size of bedrooms and issues such as poor connectivity, lack of water supply, and inadequate sewage management.

Flats surrendered by the allottees of previous schemes are not included in the new scheme, said a senior DDA official who asked not to be named, adding that the size of the LIG flats offered this time is bigger. “The LIG flats offered in this scheme are about 45 sq.m in size as opposed to less than 33 square metres in 2014 and 2017,” the official added.

In Narela, where DDA is offering 960 flats in the EWS category, the authority is yet to resolve water supply and sewer management with the Delhi Jal Board. “The issue regarding water supply and sewerage treatment is in process and will be addressed before the flats are allotted in July 2019,” said Kapoor.

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