DDA plans rural reach as land pooling fails to take off

NEW DELHI: In February this year, the web-enabled, single-window portal for inviting registrations for participation in Delhi Development Authority’s ambitious land-pooling policy was launched. Since then, the portal has seen 650 registrations and 250 hectares of land in total has come up for pooling, which has disappointed DDA as it was expecting a much more enthusiastic response from landowners.

DDA is now planning to aggressively reach out to landowners in Delhi’s rural belts and inform them about the benefits of the land pooling policy through pamphlets and a promotional video, which will be shown across villages.
“About 650 registrations have been made on the portal, which shows the willingness of these landowners to take part in the process. Out of these, 325 have also paid the registration amount and a total of 250 hectares of land has come up for land pooling,” a DDA official said. “The response has been underwhelming as we were expecting at least four times the size of land we have till now,” he said.
“Among the land that has come up for pooling, most is in Zone N, which includes Kanjhawala and other areas such as Qutub Garh, Savda Ghevra, Sultanpur Dabas, etc. This is followed by Zone L, which includes Najafgarh and areas such as Ghuman Hera, Chhawla, etc,” the official said. “Apart from this, some land has also been registered for pooling in Zone P-II at Bakhtawarpur and in Zone K-I near Dwarka and across the Najafgarh drain,” he said.
“It seems that many landowners are not fully aware about the different aspects of the policy and so we have prepared a pamphlet, which will be distributed in areas that are in the zones where the policy will be implemented,” he said.
DDA is also going to create a promotional video showcasing the benefits of the policy. “A professional agency will create the video but the basic concept will be a person explaining the policy to farmers,” the official said.
“We are hoping that the video goes ‘viral’ and reaches a large number of landowners in the capital,” he said.
Once the registration process is completed, the land parcels that have been registered will be verified by Delhi government. After the verification, DDA will send notices to landowners to form consortiums and following this, DDA will prepare sector plans showing land area break up.
The portal is scheduled to remain open for a period of six months. Once the policy is implemented, DDA expects it to produce 17 lakh dwelling units to house 76 lakh people.