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The Haryana Government’s Deen Dayal Jan Awas Yojana (DDJAY), a scheme to provide affordable housing units, has been suspended in Gurugram and Faridabad districts for being unaffordable to the common man.
The decision was taken after CM Manohar Lal Khattar raised the issue of pricing of these units in the two districts with the departments concerned while pointing out that it is not working per the policy’s purpose to provide “affordable housing”.
The Haryana CM objected strongly to the high rates of houses in the two districts, which put the property out of reach for most of the common man, as well as the fact that there was no cap on the rates even under the scheme.
The high land cost in these two districts has made plots “unaffordable” under the scheme. While the DDJAY has already issued 62 licences for nearly 695 acres of land in Gurugram, 40 licences for nearly 369 acres have already been issued in Faridabad.
A letter of intent (LoI) was granted for 24 projects, counting 211 acres in Gurugram, and four projects sum up 32.66 acres in Faridabad. According to information, 382 licences were issued for 4,200 acres, and 76,500 plots were to be carved out across the state until January 2022.
According to sources, the scheme was primarily intended for Haryana’s low and medium potential towns. This was later expanded to include high-potential towns. It was later stretched to include hyper-potential cities such as Gurugram and Faridabad.
The affordable housing scheme was originally designed to check the spreading of unauthorised colonies in Haryana. The ultimate goal was to make affordable housing available to everyone.
According to sources, the government made concessions and relaxed its standards in order to make the scheme more affordable. However, it had only a minor impact on the scheme in the two districts where land costs were prohibitively high.
To reduce costs, the government investigated the possibility of building these units on municipal land and proposed a commercial area on the project limits.
Source- The Tribune
