The Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (Mhada)’s Mumbai board’s lottery for 2016 will be delayed as the authority is facing a dilemma over the number of units available for sale.
The Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (Mhada)’s Mumbai board’s lottery for 2016 will be delayed as the authority is facing a dilemma over the number of units available for sale.
Every year, the Mhada announces the lottery in April, for which results are announced on May 31 every year.
“This year we are running late and have decided to conduct the lottery in June tentatively because the number of units available in hand is not even touching the number that we had promised earlier,” said a senior Mhada official.
The Mhada in December 2015 had claimed it would come out with 1,085 affordable homes for the Mumbai region in its 2016 lottery draw. The flats are located in areas such as Pratiksha Nagar in Sion, Rawalpada in Dahisar, Unnat Nagar in Goregaon and Chembur.
“When we conducted review meetings we came to know that the number of homes available for the lottery this year were not touching 600. However, after working hard on scrutinising empty units available in old projects it was touching the figure but we have been instructed to have the number of homes in four digits at least due to which wemay see a delay in conducting the lottery for Mumbai board this year,” said the official.
According to Mhada officials, the delay is also partly due to the fact that they were strictly told not to add buildings that were yet to receive occupation certificate (OC) from the BMC. “So we are only focusing on projects where we have completed almost 90 per cent of the work. With OC in hand, we are aiming to give possession to winners in six months from the announcement of the lottery.”
“We plan to announce the lottery for the Mumbai board in the first week of May after which the applicants will have another month in hand to apply,” said the official.
The state economic survey of 2015-16 had revealed that Mhada constructed mere 772 units in 2015-16 (up to December 2015), which is its worst performance in the past five years. Since the inception of Mhada in 1977, it has constructed around 4.5 lakh units in the state.
