According to realty developers, the government must ensure that housing facilities in the proposed smart cities of the state are affordable and their planning in terms of infrastructure and connectivity is done in keeping with future needs.
A report by Dun & Bradstreet, a research agency, said, “The government must step in to ensure that housing facilities are affordable and inclusive in proposed smart cities and these modern urban hubs have a plan for vertical expansion in future. The success of the Modi government’s ‘smart cities’ project will depend on better planning and provision of basic requirements in these cities.”
Niranjan Hiranandani, Founding President, State Wing National Real Estate Development Council (NAREDCO), said, “The state government should ensure that land that is lying vacant in the state is used for constructing affordable houses. Also, there is no ‘ease of doing business’ as far as the housing sector is concerned. The basic requirement for that is speedy approvals and curbing corruption in administration. It is very much possible to provide affordable houses at any given time if the government has a vision for it. The state government wants to provide affordable housing but is still not out with the state housing policy.”
“We at NAREDCO are ready to build five lakh affordable houses on a ‘no profit, no loss’ basis if the state government gives us land at affordable rates for that,” said Mr Hiranandani.
It had been earlier reported by The Asian Age that the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (Mhada) would build one lakh affordable homes in two phases on state government land under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) scheme. It had identified 450 hectare land in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), which is currently reserved as state government land.
Rajesh Prajapati, President, MCHI Raigad, said, “The approval mechanism is something which requires the government’s serious attention in order to support development of houses. Also, to construct affordable housing in smart cities, the government should provide land to private and public agencies via the auction process. Whichever agency is giving the best deal in the shortest period should be given permission to construct affordable houses there.”
However, real estate expert Ajay Chaturvedi said, “The whole concept of affordable housing and smart cities is very vague. Neither the Centre nor the state has defined what affordable housing actually means and what should be the cost of affordable housing. What is also not clear is where are they planning to get funds from to build smart cities. It is the buyer who will, in the end, pay for smart cities in the form of taxation.”
The Union ministry of urban development has proposed 10 ‘smart cities’ in the state of Maharashtra.
These include: Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, Thane, Kalyan-Dombivali, Pune, Nashik, Amravati, Solapur, Aurangabad and Nagpur.
