The Delhi Development Authority (DDA) is considering tweaking the design of one-room flats after being unable to find any takers in the past two housing schemes, a senior official from the authority said. “We are trying to make these flats more attractive. We are exploring the possibility of merging two LIG (lower income group) flats into one MIG (middle income group) flat,” the official said. The architecture and engineering departments of the land pooling agency are working on changing the layout of these flats to make them spacious, while sticking to building norms, the official added. In a written reply to the Rajya Sabha last month, minister of housing and urban affairs Hardeep Singh Puri said that the DDA relieved 5,661 requests for surrender or cancellation of flats allotted to the applicants in the housing scheme for 2017. “Most of the applicants have not provided any specific reason for surrender but some of the applicants have stated that the built-up areas of the allotted flats were not up to their requirement,” Puri had said.
Allotees had surrendered the flats as the size of the flats was too small, officials said. According to the housing scheme, the size of these flats is 33 square metres to 35 square metres. Puri had also said the DDA had intimated that a total of 12,553 flats were surrendered by the allotees or cancelled by the DDA under the housing scheme 2014. Over 46,000 applicants had applied for 12,617 flats across four income categories located in Rohini, Dwarka, Narela, Vasant Kunj, Jasola, Pitampura, Paschim Vihar and Siraspur. A draw was held in November for the flats, costing from close to Rs 7 lakh to over Rs 1.26 crore.