New Mhada flats become a distant dream

Mumbai: The fate of the next Maharashtra Housing and Development Authority (Mhada) lottery for Mumbai is hanging. Senior officials from Mhada have claimed that in the last lottery itself, the department put up even those flats, of which construction hadn’t even started. This has led them to search for flats that they can put in the lottery for this year and many officials do not have an idea how the lottery this year will be held.

Mhada homes are the only affordable option for the middle class and the lower section of society within Mumbai limits.

In the last lottery, Mhada had come out with 972 homes, including many homes in which the construction had either started or plans were merely approved. “(During the) last lottery itself we were suffering from this issue where, we didn’t know how to hold the lottery, whether the lottery will have much homes or not, and finally it was decided that we will even include under-construction homes. Take the example of Goregaon flats, which were included in the 2016 lottery and are still under construction,” said an officer. The situation was so serious, that the lottery was postponed to August, from the regular May 31.

Earlier, the lottery for Mhada homes would come out in the month of January, but this year, it is yet to come out till now.

When contacted, Chandrakant Dange, deputy chief officer of Mhada’s Mumbai Board said, “We will hold the lottery. However, it is the chief officer who decides on lottery. But he is not in Mumbai right now.”

There’s a lot of pressure on the authority to hold a lottery, failing which the government will receive a lot of backlash from the public and also on the ambitious plan of the BJP-led government on ‘housing for all’. Another official from Mhada added, “We are scratching files and even if a lottery is held, it will be of a few hundred homes and the number of homes in the last few years have come down too (see box).”

However, Prithviraj Chavan, former chief minister of the state, claimed this was bound to happen. “There’s no housing stock left in the city and this had to happen. There are no flats with the authority that can be put up for lottery, there is also no government land left, and those on which we could have got homes, the government has given it to builders,” he said.