With an ambition to provide houses for every citizen of Delhi, the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) on Tuesday formally announced its land pooling policy as the Urban Development Ministry (UDM) has now given nod to the DDA for the further implementations on ground. According to DDA officials in the total sum up of 1,000 hectares of land, it will construct 2,50,000 houses, out of which 50,000 will be specially constructed for economically weaker sections (EWS).
The policy is applicable mainly in the areas of urban extensions for which zonal plans have been approved but the proposal and construction was not initiated so far because of the tussles going over the land Acquisition Bill. “We have requested to Delhi Government to declare the existing 89 villages as urban villages. At present, Delhi has 95 villages. If they declare so, we can take further steps,” said Balvinder Singh, vice chairman, DDA.
“We want farmer to take initiative and considering the situations of small farmers, a provision has made to give relief to small farmers with 2 hectares to 5 hectares of land,” added Singh. According to this new land pooling policy, the small farmers who are not able to pay the external development charges (EDC), development entities shall be exempted for paying EDC.
In this case the farmer has to return 8 per cent land to the DDA, and the former will be entitled to 35 per cent of residential land instead of 43 per cent as it was earlier. The commercial component of 3 per cent and public and semi-public facilities component of 2 per cent is the same. “We have invited the agency to educate farmers to give land to DDA for infrastructure and to clear all doubts related to land issues. Around 70 agencies have approached us,” said a DDA official. To avoid any kind of malice, DDA will devise a computerised system wherein the received applications will be allotted a priority number.