Finally, after 20 months, Chandigarh Housing Board to hold board meeting on Jan 31
Due to the Chandigarh Housing Board’s failure to convene a board meeting for nearly two years, the issue of need-based changes continues to hang fire, leaving about 60,000 property owners on the tenterhooks
The Chandigarh Housing Board (CHB) has finally scheduled a board of directors meeting on January 31 — around 20 months after its last meeting in May 2023.

Due to the board’s failure to convene a board meeting for nearly two years, the issue of need-based changes continues to hang fire, leaving about 60,000 property owners on the tenterhooks. Scheduled in two weeks now, the meeting’s agenda is awaited.
In October last year, UT administrator Gulab Chand Kataria had re-constituted the board for a period of three years.
The official board members include CHB chief executive officer (CEO), UT finance secretary, UT estate officer, UT chief architect and UT chief engineer, while the non-official members are BJP leader and former councillor Shakti Prakash Devshali, retired PCS officer Balbir Singh Dhol and a city-based architect Vinod Joshi.
Even in 2023, the board managed to convene only two meetings – one in February and the other in May.
In December 2023, then UT administrator Banwarilal Purohit had assured that authorities were reconsidering need-based changes in about 60,000 CHB houses and would frame a policy accordingly, but nothing materialised thereon.
CHB Residents’ Federation president Nirmal Dutt said, “In the past decade, the issue of the need-based changes policy has generated much heat and dust, but no solution has been found. We feel the officers are not taking the issue seriously, and if it is not sorted out, we will hold a protest.”
CHB presentation on stalled Sec-53 housing scheme today
Two months after UT administrator Gulab Chand Kataria directed the Chandigarh Housing Board to prepare a fresh presentation on the scrapped Sector 53 general housing scheme, the board is set to present it before UT chief secretary-cum-board chairman Rajeev Verma on Friday.
Following this, the chief secretary will discuss the matter with the administrator.
In November 2024, Kataria had instructed the CHB to submit the updated presentation by December 31, reopening the door for the scheme’s potential revival.
On August 3, 2023, former UT administrator Banwarilal Purohit had put the Sector-53 general housing scheme on hold, citing it was not required at the time. Consequently, CHB had cancelled the ₹200-crore tenders floated on August 2 for construction of 340 flats on nine acres.
The scheme was revived in February 2023, five years after it was scrapped in 2018 due to poor response from buyers, attributed primarily to high flat prices.
Under the revived plan, the board had planned to offer 340 flats in three categories — 192 three-bedroom, 100 two-bedroom and 48 two-bedroom EWS flats, for ₹1.65 crore, ₹1.40 crore and ₹55 lakh, respectively.