DDA mulls housing scheme online

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, July 24

With an idea to help people standing in long queues for hours, the DDA is considering bringing housing scheme online. 

Once it is online, the flat aspirants will be able to apply online for getting a flat and refund. Last time the DDA had received 10 lakh forms for flats online and offline both but the online system crashed. The second time the DDA will update the technical infrastructure, a DDA official said. 

The Delhi Development Authority is slated to come out with its next housing scheme in December.

Former DDA Vice-Chairman Balvinder Kumar had in January 2015 said the "new scheme would be much larger than the 2014 project, and will include at least 24,660 LIG flats."

The government last week said over 40 per cent of the houses allotted by the DDA under its Housing Scheme 2014 have been surrendered or cancelled with some allottees complaining about the size of the flats and locality.

"The DDA has informed that out of 25,039 flats for draw of lots in the Housing Scheme 2014, 10,653 flats have been surrendered or cancelled," Minister of State for Urban Development Rao Inderjit Singh said in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha.

"We are in talks with certain vendors for upgrading our infrastructure to handle the expected increase in traffic, but nothing finalised yet. But, we are technologically capable of handling the online rush," he said.

The draw of lots for 10,08,985 applications, the highest in DDA history, was held on November 25. For the first time the urban body had also webcast the draw process.

The flagship Housing Scheme 2014 offered 25,040 flats across categories, with prices ranging between Rs 7 lakh and Rs 1.2 crore.

In 2014, the online response was so massive that the DDA's official website crashed soon after the launch.