The Urban Development Ministry and the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) are passing the buck to each other on the issue of allotment of flats in the 2010 Commonwealth Games Village in the capital.
Almost a year after the mega sport event, there’s no sign of a solution on how or when the 445 flats sold by Emaar MGF will be handed over to the buyers. Also, the authorities are quiet on the proposed auction of the remaining 743 flats (under the DDA quota) in the same complex.
In fact, the buyers were promised the delivery of these flats within two months after the October 3-14 Games. But on Wednesday, a senior official in the Urban Development Ministry said his department was not in a position to give any timeline as various agencies had to decide things. “Issues have to be resolved,” he told Business Standard here. “I cannot possibly guess by when things will be sorted out,” he said when asked about a likely time within which the flats will be delivered to the buyers.
On the proposed auction of the remaining 743 flats in the complex on the banks of the Yamuna, the Urban Development Ministry official said the DDA should have an answer to that question.
When contacted, a DDA spokesperson said the floor area ratio issues have to be sorted out by the “competent authorities within permissible rules”. Asked to elaborate, he said they were the Urban Development Ministry and DDA. The DDA spokesperson too declined to give any deadline by which the issues would be resolved for the delivery of 445 flats and also for auction of the remaining 743.
The main problem over which the matter is stuck now is the refusal by the Urban Art Commission, an autonomous body under the Urban Development Ministry, to approve the clearance certificate for the CWG village residential project. A senior official at the Urban Art Commission told this newspaper that the “builders/developers have constructed extra area beyond what was stipulated”, and that is where the clearance is stuck.
The Urban Art Commission said resolving the floor area ratio or the extra construction issue was not its concern. “It is for the government to see,” said a spokesperson.
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The Commission’s view is that it can approve the project only if local authorities, including the DDA, gives clearance. The Urban Art Commission had on August 10 refused to give the project a clearance certificate. “They (DDA) have to now come back to us now with a fresh proposal,” the official said. if all rules are adhered, the clearance will take at least a month from the time it receives a proposal.
Without the completion certificate, neither can the Emaar flats be handed over to the buyers, nor can the DDA flats be auctioned.
The CWG village flats (with two to five bedrooms each) in East Delhi, located next to the famous Akshardham Temple, were sold at Rs 14,000 to Rs 15,000 per sq ft, much before the Games. The prices of the flats ranged from anything between Rs 1.85 crore and Rs 4.5 crore.
The Games village houses 34 residential towers and 1,168 apartments. According to the project development agreement signed on September 24, 2007, DDA and Emaar MGF were to share the residential apartments in the ratio 1:2. This was effectively changed to 1:0.63, with the decision to bail out the project developer (Emaar MGF). Subsequently, DDA purchased another 333 apartments from Emaar MGF’s share.
As of now, 723 out of the total 1,168 apartments are with DDA, and the remaining 445 with Emaar MGF. Also of the 17 flats that were demolished due to faulty construction, only 6 are with DDA. While Emaar has sold its share of flats, DDA is yet to start selling. DDA plans to sell its quota of flats to PSUs, government entities, and MPs, among others, through a process of auction.