Centre set to push amendments to DDA, to give fillip to land pooling policy

Time of India

a day ago

The Centre is all set to push amendments to the Delhi Development Act, 1957, to give a fillip to the
Land Pooling Policy
and involve private developers in vertical development in 129 sectors spread across 104 urbanised villages of the capital.
With the BJP government taking charge of Delhi, the Centre has decided to bring focus back to the long-pending Land Pooling Policy which, though notified in 2013 and 2018, has not been operationalised.
The Centre is planning to push amendments to the Delhi Development Act which will make land pooling mandatory for all residents if a certain percentage -- 70% -- of owners of land in an area agree to pool land.
The amendments also give power to the Centre to declare mandatory land pooling and mandatory urban regeneration even if a minimum threshold participation of 70% has not been achieved.
The amendments were first proposed in 2022 and were put out for public consultation. However, they have been pending with the ministry of housing and urban affairs.
According to sources, the amendments are likely to be pushed once again to operationalise the policy and build residential high-rises and housing for economically weaker sections in these areas.
The LPP envisages high-rise residential buildings in so-far underdeveloped and chaotic areas of Outer Delhi like Narela, Bawana and Najafgarh. Earlier, DDA used to acquire land, build flats, provide community infrastructure like parks and then float housing schemes to dispose of these flats. However, this DDA-led colony development has become outdated and being challenged due to complicated land acquisition processes.
In 2018, DDA came up with a LPP which gave the opportunity to the landowners of a notified sector to organise themselves into a "consortium", pool their land and keep 60% for development of residential high rises and other facilities and hand over 40% to DDA for community infrastructure like roads and sewer networks. As per the policy, 70% of the landowners of contiguous land in a sector have to give consent for their land to be pooled.
The response to the scheme has been tepid as not a single sector has been developed. The biggest challenge in implementation remains the consent of landowners. This is why the Centre is now keen on bringing the amendments to make it mandatory for landowners to participate in the scheme.
The Centre is also likely to increase the floor area ratio allowed from 200 to 400. This will make it more lucrative for private builders to come and participate in vertical development of the city.
The policy is included in
Master Plan for Delhi 2041
, which has not been notified pending approval of the Centre.