Mhada fails to meet target this year

Has only 970 homes on offer

While the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (Mhada) made tall claims of constructing one lakh houses for the city in the next five years, its Mumbai Board lottery for 2016 is going to have just 970 homes, which is at least 10 per cent less than the number of homes it had on sale in 2015. Last year, Mhada had announced a lottery of 1,063 homes, of which 66 homes were reserved for the physically challenged.

S.S. Zende, vice-president, Mhada, said, “We will announce the Mumbai Board lottery for 970 homes within a week and declare the results by end of June. The number houses have gone down due to the scarcity of land in the city and we have tried our best to meet the target of four digits.”

Mhada, in December 2015, had claimed it would come out with 1,085 affordable homes for the Mumbai region in its 2016 lottery draw. However, the reality is different.

“When we conducted review meetings we came to know that the number of homes available in the city for this year’s lottery did not touch the 600 mark. However, after working hard on scrutinising empty units available in old projects we reached the figure. But, we have been instructed to have the number of homes in four digits. That seems difficult now,” said a Mhada official.

The state economic survey of 2015-16 had revealed that Mhada constructed mere 772 units in 2015-16 (up to December 2015), which is its worst performance in the past five years. Since the inception of Mhada in 1977, it has constructed around 4.5 lakh units in the state. The flats for the Mumbai Board lottery are located in areas such as Pratiksha Nagar in Sion, Rawalpada in Dahisar, Unnat Nagar in Goregaon and Chembur.