Ghost townships of Maha

Mumbai: In the early 2000s, the state witnessed a spree of integrated township programmes in lush hilltop areas such as Lonavala and Lavasa, where developers lured homebuyers with a slew of amenities and offers. However, such townships have now been reduced to ghost towns with unsold housing stocks, further saddling the developers with bad loans. Aamby Valley City and Lavasa Township can be counted as examples of failure to successfully execute integrated townships in India.

The ambitious sales projections made by developers in their marketing campaign and actual sales figures don’t match, leading to project failure, said Gulam Zia, executive director, Knight Frank India.

Aamby Valley City, the Rs 39,000 crore project launched by the Subrata Roy-led Sahara group in Pune, is now in legal trouble after the business conglomerate failed to deposit money to refund its investors. The group had pooled money from small investors for the project. Owing to controversies and Supreme Court’s intervention, the project is being auctioned in parts by the Sahara group.

Meanwhile, Lavasa, a mega project of Hind-ustan Construction Company, which was planned to house 30,000-50,000 people, today only houses 10,000 people. The project was mired in controversy in the wake of allegations of illegal land acquisition and violation of environmental norms, and the ministry of environment and forests issued a stop-work notice in 2010. Last month, Taiwan-based NRI Man-ohar Damecha, who got possession of a villa in Lavasa 10 years after he had booked it, filed a criminal case against the developer. “I had paid more than 20 per cent of the total amount in 2008 but neither got any possession nor sale agreement,” said Mr Damecha. The project offered villas and apartments for between Rs 10 lakh and Rs 1 crore. Amenities such as an international school, m-an-made lakes, sports, hospitality and retail we-re promised in the plan. Meanwhile, when contacted to learn about the status of the project’s revival, the HCC spokesperson declined to comment.  

Anuj Puri, chairman, Anarock Property Consu-ltants, said that despite being widely accepted in India, integrated developments often grapple with multiple issues. “Outside the gated community, many projects lack proper public transport facilities, have connectivity issues with major areas of the city and also lack physical infrastructure,” he said.