Lucknow: Housing board cuts prices to sell its properties
The Uttar Pradesh Housing and Development Board has decided to bring down the cost of its flats to clear its unsold inventory of 11,000 properties, including 9,000 flats, across its various housing schemes in Uttar Pradesh.
The Uttar Pradesh Housing and Development Board has decided to bring down the cost of its flats to clear its unsold inventory of 11,000 properties, including 9,000 flats, across its various housing schemes in the state, an official said.
Also, the board has decided not to launch any new projects for the time being. These decisions were taken at a board meeting on Monday.
The 2013 allottees of the UPHDB’s Siddharth Vihar housing scheme in Ghaziabad, allottees of Jagriti Vihar in Meerut and some other schemes in other cities will be immediate beneficiaries of this decision to slash prices.
“The board has decided to reduce the prices of flats in this housing scheme by ₹70,000 to ₹1.20 lakh,” housing commissioner Ajay Chauhan said.
He said most of these flats and housing projects were undertaken without carrying out a proper demand survey. To bring the prices down, the board has decided to reduce parking, maintenance and late payment charges.
The decision was taken at the meeting presided over by principal secretary, housing, Nitin Ramesh Gokarn, to denotify and release land earmarked by the Housing Board for its old schemes and housing projects, which could not take off for some reason or the other.
“Because of the delay, most of these schemes, in any case, had become unviable given the revised land compensation rate fixed under the New Land Acquisition Act,” he said. The land for future projects will be purchased through mutual negotiations with farmers, he said.
“According to one estimate, around 3,000 acres of our land has been mired in dispute for the past 25 years,” said Chauhan, adding that a huge amount of the agency’s money, which could otherwise be utilized for other development works and projects, was stuck.
A large number of farmers, whose land was acquired for such schemes in Lucknow (Vrindavan Yojana) Aligarh, Meerut, Kanpur, Hapur, Jaunpur Shajahanpur, Varanasi, Rae Bareli, Muzzafarnagar, Unnao, Lakhimpur are expected to benefit from this decision.
To check unauthorised construction in its schemes, the Board, which did not have the power to seal a building, mooted an amendment under section 82 of the Act to empower itself to take action against illegal constructions in its housing schemes.