DDA may launch next housing scheme online

After having to deal with the chaos and long queues of flat aspirants at its headquarters, the DDA is mulling over making its next housing scheme a completely online affair.

“Talks are going on to make the next DDA housing scheme fully online. Last time we had received over 10 lakh applications, both online as well as offline. But this time we are thinking of making it entirely online,” a senior DDA official said.

The scheme is slated to come out in December this year.

As per recent reports, about 11,000 flats are to be offered under housing scheme 2016. Sources said that a large chunk of these may include flats surrendered by owners to DDA, which works under the urban development ministry.

Former DDA vice chairman Balvinder Kumar had in January 2015, however, said the “new scheme would be much larger than the 2014 project, and will include at least 24,660 lower income group flats.”

The government last week said, over 40 per cent of the houses allotted by the DDA under its housing scheme 2014 have been surrendered or cancelled with some allottees complaining about the size of the flats and locality.

“The DDA has informed that out of 25,039 flats for draw of lots in the housing scheme 2014, 10,653 flats have been surrendered or cancelled,” Minister of state for urban development, Rao Inderjit Singh, said in a written reply in Rajya Sabha.

“We are in talks with certain vendors for upgrading our infrastructure to handle the expected increase in traffic, but nothing is finalised yet. But, we are technologically capable of handling the online rush,” he said.

The draw of lots for 10,08,985 applications, the highest in DDA history, was held on November 25. For the first time the urban body had also webcast the draw process.