NEW DELHI: The land pooling policy had already been notified in the past and regulations for executing the policy has been finalized for consideration and approval by the government of India. After a long wait of 5 years finally the policy has been approved and can be implemented.
Land Pooling is a concept that where small chunks of land are owned by group of owners who assemble for the development of infrastructure as per the provisions of the Delhi Development Authority (DDA). The policy has a lot of negative impact and in the document many reasons and specifications on certain set of rules and how they are to be implemented are missing.
This will lead to a lot of confusion and misleading steps in the future in the context of seller and the buyer. There is almost no amount of transparency in the documentation which is another cause of confusion and will play a negative impact in the upcoming future.
“DDA’s new land pooling policy that took almost five years to come along has been a massive disappointment. It is a major setback to the government’s stated goal to provide affordable housing to all by 2022. Most of the people friendly provisions have been either done away with or curtailed to a large extent. First off, the criteria necessitating 70% land to be contagious is something that should not had been inserted in the first place,” said, Neh Srivastava, President, Central Secretariat Services Officers Society society.
“Furthermore, the document fails to make it clear whether this criteria is applicable to sectors or villages as sectors have not yet been defined creating a confusion to the participants. The decision to bring down the FAR from 400 to 200 will not only have negative impacts on the number of housing units that can be built but will also double the proportionate land cost to the end user making it beyond affordability for the public at large,” he added.
The third major flaw is with the document’s stated idea of Consortium. It gives undue power and advantage to the big builders and stakeholders. Due to lack of transparency, it will lead to further marginalization of small land owners or farmers, who were supposed to be the real beneficiaries. We hope that better sense prevails and MoUD comes with amendments to the present set of provisions. Else this policy is destined to go down the same road as other similar policies in the sector. Else like minded genuine Welfare Societies made by Govt officers, PSUs, Autonomous bodies and others should come forward to make consortium in order to protect their member’s interests.” said Srivastava.
However, DDA has not given any approval to individual societies and the return of land will also be based on the applications and subsequent processes in DDA. The final approval is still pending and the customers’ needs to be careful from misleading and false Advertisement.