Delhi okays Centre’s rental home plan, wants some flats exempted

Following large scale reverse migration during Covid pandemic induced lockdown, the Centre launched the ARHCs scheme to provide rental housing to migrant urban poor in 2020.

After opposing it for two years, the Delhi government has decided to implement the Centre’s Affordable Rental Housing Complexes (ARHC) Scheme, which is aimed at providing housing to migrant urban poor at affordable rentals, according to senior Delhi government officials.

The government wants these flats to be allotted on a freehold basis, especially in areas where the slum clusters are within a five-km radius of the housing complex. (Representative image/Sourced)

Bipin Rai, member of Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board (DUSIB which is the nodal agency for providing housing to urban poor in the city), said, “For the welfare of people, the Delhi government has agreed to implement the Centre’s ARHC scheme. All we want is that the flats should be allotted to people at the earliest. The Memorandum of Understanding with the Centre will be signed soon. We will send a plan for its implementation to the centre for approval. But we have sent our request for exemption of some flats from the scheme.”

Garima Gupta, chief executive officer, DUSIB, said, “The Delhi government has agreed to implement the ARHC scheme, but we have asked the ministry to exempt around 18000 flats.”

Following large scale reverse migration during Covid pandemic induced lockdown, the Centre launched the ARHCs scheme to provide rental housing to migrant urban poor in 2020. Under the ARHCs scheme, these flats (for which even the Centre has paid) have to be allotted to urban poor on rent.

But the Delhi government has been opposing it saying that the scheme will not be successful in the national capital. The government wants these flats to be allotted on a freehold basis, especially in areas where the slum clusters are within a five-km radius of the housing complex. “But the Centre has not permitted it. We can’t allot these flats till we get the Centre’s approval as they are a stakeholder,” said a senior DUSIB official.

It is learnt that Delhi lieutenant governor Anil Baijal has written to the housing and urban affairs minister Hardeep Singh Puri requesting that 18,639 flats, constructed by the Delhi government under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM), be exempted from the ARHC scheme.

A senior Delhi government official said that of the 18,000-plus flats, the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) has requested the Delhi government’s Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board (DUSIB), nodal agency for providing housing to urban poor, for 9,535 flats for its in-situ rehabilitation project.

For the balance 9,104 flats, DUSIB has taken relocation charges from various agencies and beneficiaries. Last year, the Delhi government wrote to MoHUA to exempt these 9,000 plus flats from the scheme as money has been collected.

“We are yet to hear from the ministry whether these 18000 flats will be exempted from the scheme or not,” said a senior Delhi government official, privy to the development.

When contacted, a senior ministry official said, “We have received the request from the Delhi government. It is being examined in consultation with the state government.”

There are close to 30,000 flats which have been constructed under the UPA-era schemes Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) and Rajiv Awas Yojana (RAY) in the past few years. But a majority of these flats are lying vacant. While the Delhi government initiated the allotment process to 9,000-plus slum residents, it was put on hold after the Centre’s ARHCs scheme was announced in 2020.

The recent building collapse in Bawana in which four people died has raised concerns about the structural stability of these complexes, which have been lying vacant for nearly a decade.

Replying to a question about the Bawana building collapse in Rajya Sabha on Monday, Union housing and urban affairs minister Hardeep Singh Puri on Monday said that the government has repeatedly requested the state government to implement ARHC.

The minister said on Monday in the Upper House of the Parliament, “…now of the remaining 35,000, we have been repeatedly writing to them to say that ‘please make this available for affordable housing rental complexes so that we can provide temporary shelter to those who need it. They may have a permanent abode in their place under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana….”