Excerpt from Hindustan Times by Sujit Mahamulkar, on 7th Feb 2010: Read Full Article

Those who own Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (MHADA) flats in Mankhurd will not get drinking water from the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC).
However, owners of MHADA flats at Versova will now get 45 litres of water per head, the BMC has said.
The BMC said it will not be able to supply drinking water to newly constructed MHADA flats in Mankhurd because the daily demand is more than 2 lakh litres.
“It won’t be possible to
supply drinking water to residential complexes in Mankhurd as there is already a shortage of water,” said Vinay Deshpande head of the BMC’s water
department. “We would consider their plea only after we receive sufficient rainfall in the six catchment areas from where the city gets water.”
The MHADA had constructed and sold 3,863 flats under the affordable housing scheme for the economically weaker, lower, middle and higher income sections.

As reported in www.expressindia.com  on Jan 06, 2010

Over the last four days, the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (MHADA) has sold around 2 lakh application forms to hopeful homebuyers for its 3,449 new flats. The flats will given out through a draw of lots in the first week of April.

The response is, however, feeble as compared to the overwhelming response received last year when the sale of forms had crossed 1.80 lakh in the first two days. At the time of the lottery, there were 4.33 lakh aspirants for the 3,863 flats with people jostled in serpentine queues daily to collect forms from the15 branches of HDFC.

This time the forms will be available at 75 branches of the Saraswat Co-operative Bank in Mumbai, Thane and Navi Mumbai throught the day.

MHADA officials attribute the reason for the relatively lukewarm response to the fact that 80 per cent of the flats available are for the Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) and Lower Income Groups (LIG) category. Only very few flats are available in the one and two bedroom categories for the middle (MIG) and high income groups (HIG). Reservations for various categories have further reduced the flats available to half. For instance, of the 150 two-bedroom flats in Versova, only 77 are for the general public.

Besides Versova, the flats are available in Mankhurd, Malvani, Dahisar and Powai with the largest sized flats being three 1114 sq ft row houses at Dindoshi in Malad. “Also, this time to avoid facing flak after the allotment of flats, we have clarified that there would be no water available in the flats until 2011 owing to water cut imposed by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC). This might have also deterred many from applying for flats,” said a MHADA official.The last date for buying the forms is January 21.

The Maharashtra Area and Housing Development Authority (MHADA) is planning to sell forms for Next Lottery Scheme 2010.

Mhada has announced that they will provide more than 27,000 houses to Mumbaikars by March 2011.

Another 12,172 houses would be ready for sale by March 2010. In March 2011, the agency would sell 12,400 houses. Mhada is constructing 6,000 houses on 11 old mill plots and another 6,000 flats as transit camps in Mumbai.

MHADA has constructed flats at Pratiksha Nagar in Sion, Sahakar Nagar at Chembur, Canara Engineering at Ghatkopar , Shailendra Nagar at Dahisar, Bimbisar Nagar and Siddharth Nagar at Goregaon, Chandivli, Tagore Nagar and Kannamwar Nagar at Vikroli, and Versova in Andheri.

Details about Application Forms will soon be available on MHADA Website -

http://mhada.maharashtra.gov.in/?q=home

The common man’s dream of affordable housing in Mumbai has been jolted. The Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (Mhada) has decided to defer its plans of holding the second lottery for low-cost houses. Blame it on the impending water shortage.

The Mhada was hoping to come out with the second lot of houses — it had planned to release 4,000 flats more in the market — in December. But, five months after the first lottery was held, only 47 of the 3,863 winners have been issued letters till date.

The allotment of these 47 houses too has been stayed by the Bombay high court following a petition challenging the “lack of transparency” of the software used in the first lottery on October 6.

While the formalities of flat allotment have contributed to the time warp, a senior Mhada official said that the delay was largely to be blamed on the housing authorities’ inability to provide secure water supply connections for the newly-built colonies.

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) is yet to approve water connections for the housings in Oshiwara, Sahakar Nagar in Chembur, and Shailendra Nagar, Dahisar.

Over 888 affordable houses for the high-income group have been allotted in Oshiwara. The other two locations have houses for all economic categories. Each of these locations would require over 2 lakh litres of water daily once people start living there.

Due to the water crunch, the BMC has issued a policy guideline, which bars connections any housing project needing more than 2 lakh litre a day till 2012 — the year the Middle Vaitarna project is due to be completed. Mhada has been requesting the BMC hydraulic department to treat its projects as special cases, but the BMC is yet to oblige.

“There is no point in calling lotteries and issuing allotment letters till these problems are sorted out,” the Mhada official said. Permissions for water connections for the first lot of flats are likely to be issued by the BMC after Diwali. A senior hydraulic department official said that the department had decided to supply water just enough to meet the minimum requirement of these colonies.