DDA to merge 1BHKs, make flats spacious

With its small one-bedroom flats failing to find any takers in two successive housing schemes, the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) is now planning to tweak the design of these flats to make them more spacious.

The land owning agency is toying with the idea of breaking the walls dividing two one-bedroom flats and merging them to form a two-bedroom flat, thereby making them more attractive to buyers. In its 2017 housing scheme, DDA had put on offer 12,617 flats, for which it had received more than 46,000 applications. However, within a month of allotment of these flats to successful applicants, more than 3,000 surrendered their flats.

The allottees were chosen in a draw of lot and most of those who were allotted one-bedroom flats in areas such as Narela, Siraspur, etc, chose to surrender them. The number of requests for surrender or cancellation of allotments of flats from applicants reached the figure of 5,661 very soon, as informed by the Union minister of housing and urban affairs Hardeep Singh Puri to Rajya Sabha in January this year.

The reason cited by applicants for surrendering the flats was primarily their small size, apart from the lack of basic amenities. Many of these flats were the ones that were surrendered in DDA’s 2014 housing scheme too. DDA had put the flats again on offer during the 2017 housing scheme.

After failing to elicit interest among allottees for one-bedroom flats in two consecutive housing schemes, DDA is now exploring options to make these flats more attractive and liveable by tweaking their design.

“We are exploring architectural and technical possibilities to make these flats better,” JP Agarwal, principal commissioner (land disposal and housing), DDA told TOI.

Agarwal said that officials from DDA’s architecture and engineering departments are working on changing the layout of these flats to make them more spacious, while confirming to building norms. “As the construction area of the flats will remain the same, we are also exploring the possibility of merging two LIG (lower income group) flats into one MIG (middle-income group) flat,” he added.

If the usual carpet area of an LIG or one-bedroom flat is 33 square metres, after merger two flats, DDA would be able to offer a 66 square metre two-bedroom flat, which would be more spacious and hopefully more attractive to buyers, said a DDA official.

Source- ET Realty