Good news for eight lakh people

After staying in limbo for the last three years, the Delhi Development Authority has finally decided to de-notify 230 colonies that were unauthorised till last year in its board meeting held on Monday.

Good news for residents of the 230 colonies that were unauthorised till last year.

HT Image

After staying in limbo for the last three years, the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) has finally decided to de-notify these colonies in its board meeting held on Monday. Around 8 lakh people live in these colonies.

Till now, these areas were under DDA but post de-notification, the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) would immediately take over the control of building activities as per building bylaws and provisions of the Municipal Corporation Act. The proposal will now go to the Union Urban Development Ministry for final approval before it comes into force.

These 230 colonies are part of the 1,436 unauthorised colonies that were regularised by the Delhi government last year. But since they were notified areas under DDA development control, their residents found it difficult to get their building plans sanctioned from DDA.

Besides, these areas were bereft of basic civic amenities like water and electric supply, roads and sewer lines as the MCD and Delhi government provides these basic services.

All this will change with MCD taking over control.

“These areas would become developed as the civic agency is responsible for providing and maintaining these services,” said a senior DDA official who did not want to be quoted as he is not authorised to speak to the media.

Also, once it comes under the MCD’s control, it would be the civic agency’s responsibility to check that no unauthorised construction and encroachment takes place in these areas.

“We decided to de-notify these areas as they had remained undeveloped for a very long time despite being declared development area,” said a senior DDA official.

Also, because of lack of enforcement, these areas had seen a mushrooming of unauthorised construction and development of unauthorised colonies.

“There has also been a persistent demand from various quarters to denotify these areas as the ground reality had changed,” he added.