Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs Notifies the Modified Land Pooling Policy

The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs vide Notification S.O. 5220(E) dated 11.10.2018, has notified the modified land policy.  The policy would be applicable in the urbanizable areas of urban extensions in 95 villages of Delhi. The policy replaces the earlier policy notified in the year 2013.  It  aims at developing smart and sustainable neighborhoods, sectors and zones, planned and executed as per the availability of water, power and other infrastructure.

The core of the policy is active role of private sector and farmers also involved in assembling land and developing physical and social infrastructure. Owners or group of owners can pool land parcels for development as per prescribed norms.  Land Parcels of any size can participate under the policy. However, the minimum land to be pooled is 2 hectares to ensure adequate return of land for development and form a Developer Entity.   DDA will now play the role of a facilitator and the process of planning, pooling and development will be taken up by Developer Entities/ Consortiums.

For smooth planning and development of infrastructure, integrated Sector-based planning approach shall be followed.  A minimum of 70% contiguous land of the developable area within a sector, free of encumbrances is required to be pooled to make the sectors eligible for development under the Policy.

Considering the availability of resources and services an FAR of 200 is allowed for group housing/residential use under the policy.  DDA has estimated that it is expected to generate about  17 Lakh Dwelling units out of which around 5 lakh Dwelling units will be available under EWS category, to house about 76 lakh persons.

Differential land return in two categories as per the earlier policy has been replaced with uniform division of land on 60:40 basis in the modified Policy. The Consortium will retain 60% of pooled land and hold the remaining 40% on behalf of DDA.  Consortium can utilize 60% of pooled land for development of residential, commercial, public and semi-public facilities as per the policy and MPD-2021 provisions.  The remaining 40% of the pooled land is to be surrendered, free of encumbrances, as and when required to DDA/service providing agencies to undertake developmental work.  To keep pace with new forms of development, provision for achieving a vertical mix of uses (residential, commercial, public and semi-public) at building level is introduced.  Additional Development Controls have been introduced to regulate building and infrastructure aspects of developments.

External Development Charges (EDC) shall be payable on entire area of pooled land in installments to cover the cost of providing city level infrastructure.

In order to promote affordable and inclusive housing, FAR of 15% over and above maximum permissible residential FAR has also been allowed for EWS/ affordable housing.

A Single Window System is being created for implementation of policy in DDA. All processes of receiving applications, verifications, grant of approvals and licenses, etc. shall be online and will be completed in a time bound manner. A two-stage Grievance Redressal Mechanism within DDA has been introduced for clear operationalization and implementation of the policy.