A view of a DDA land in New Delhi.
| Photo Credit: File photo
About eight years ago, retired bank employee Raj Kataria joined a housing society that bought over six acres of land in north-west Delhi’s Ladpur village. Mr. Kataria hoped to build a home after the Delhi Development Authority identified the village under its Land Pooling Policy (LPP).
However, with the LPP yet to be implemented on ground – it was first notified in 2013 and then in 2018 – Mr. Kataria and fellow investors have been left waiting inordinately. They see little hope of realising their dreams anytime soon with no signs of proposed amendments to the Delhi Development Act 1957 – to make land pooling mandatory – in the ongoing Parliament session.
Expressing his regret, the 59-year-old, said he spent a sizable amount to buy the land and continues to spend on maintenance.
“We visit the land over five times a year to ensure it has not been encroached upon. The land’s value has fallen since the policy never took-off and selling it would be a loss. Fellow investors frequently call to check the policy’s status. Most of them have spent their life’s savings on it,” Mr. Kataria said.
The LPP identified 104 villages for land pooling and aimed to provide 17 lakh dwelling units for roughly 80 lakh people. These villages have been divided into six zones and sub-divided into 129 sectors. While the DDA acts as a facilitator, the urban body has struggled to garner interest among landowners and failed to achieve the primary eligibility criteria of minimum 70% participation of owners along with 70% of the land being contiguous.
In the run-up to the recent MCD polls, Union Minister Hardeep Puri said the proposed amendments to help remove these roadblocks “will come in the next Parliament session”, after he first announced the plan in early March.
However, a senior official at the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs said the Union Cabinet has yet to approve the amendments. The Cabinet approval “will take time”, the official said, adding that the Bill to amend the Act has not been introduced.
One of the proposed amendments is to make pooling of land mandatory for the remaining landowners if 70% owners have already agreed. The other amendment would grant power to the Centre to declare land pooling mandatory, even if the minimum criteria of 70% participation and 70% contiguity are not achieved.
For the likes of Sunil Pahwa, part of a housing society that bought five acres of land in 2015, in Samaspur village, the delay has pushed investors to a conclusion that the “authorities have no will” to execute the LPP.
“Nine years is a long time. We would have built our houses by now. People in the housing societies who encouraged fellow members to invest are now getting phone calls from landowners who want their money back. When a policy like this isn’t implemented, people like us bear the brunt, not those who drafted it,” said Mr. Pahwa.
Like Mr. Pahwa, H.K. Yadav, a farmer, has been eagerly waiting for the LPP to kick-off, as he hopes it will help develop his village near Najafgarh.
He and Mr. Pahwa highlighted that apart from the amendments, the parallel strategy of the DDA issuing conditional notices to form landowner consortiums has not worked out, especially in three sectors — Sector 10A (Zone N) and Sectors 2 and 3 (Zone P-II).
The notices were issued in mid-May on the condition that landowners, who expressed interest in the LPP, negotiate and convince the remaining landowners to pool their land within 90 days. However, according to a senior DDA official privy to the matter, the process is still going on despite the 90-day period having passed.
“The LPP is a people’s policy and its execution depends on their participation. Those who expressed interest in the policy and purchased land were aware of this. Consultations are going on in the six sectors where conditional notices were issued,” said the official.
Since the window for land pooling applications was first opened in 2019, close to 7,100 applications have been received from land owners and around 7,400 hectares – out of the 19,074 hectares of poolable land – have been pooled till date. The deadline to express interest, which has been extended on numerous occasions, is December 31.