Delhi’s premiere housing agency DDA will, in partnership with a private construction company, be redeveloping the Kathputli Colony near Shadipur in West Delhi.
Spread over 5.22 hectares of land, Raheja Builders will be developing 2,800 dwelling units at the existing slums and hand over the same to DDA. In turn, the developer will be given the remaining free space to be used for commercial and residential purposes. A proposal regarding shifting residents of Kathputli colony will be brought in the meeting of DDA on Monday.
“Raheja Builders will redevelop the cluster by constructing 2,800 dwelling units and these will be transferred to DDA free of cost. Raheja have been adjusting the land for in situ development, the balance land for setting up residential apartments and commercial property,” the proposal said.
Since the free land available at the site was not adequate, DDA cleared land at Anand Parbat for temporary relocation of residents of Kathputli colony. The transit accommodation has been ready. Once the residents of the colony are shifted to the transit accommodation, the developer will start construction at Kathputli Colony.
According to the proposal, during the construction and till the residents are moved back to the colony, the developer will maintain the transit accommodation. The redevelopment project, which was announced in October 2009, failed to take off after the DDA found it impossible to set up transit camps at a number of locations it had initially identified. At each of these places, locals and politicians opposed the rehabilitation of a slum cluster in their neighbourhood, even if only on a temporary basis.
While the presently earmarked strip of land at Anand Parbat can accommodate 1,500 dwelling units, the DDA plans to pitch the remaining 1,300 units on an adjacent hillock. However, before this, the land-owning agency would have to clear rudimentary plastic sheet structures held aloft by wooden sticks and logs that encroachers have only recently erected on the hillock.
The dwelling units in the transit camp are one-room tenements measuring approximately 12x8 feet. Electricity connections, plug-points and switchboards are being installed in all the structures, but for water the incoming residents will have to depend on tankers. Workers at the site say a tube-well is being bored. While the walls are made of three-inch-thick concrete sheets, the roofs are made of tin sheets with false ceiling.
The 30-square-metre flats for the slum-dwellers that Raheja Developers is building in the 5.22 hectares colony.