Tweak in Land Pooling Policy, 70% contiguous land must

A new regulation in the Land Pooling Policy (LPP) has been inserted that allows a minimum 70 per cent contiguous land of the developable area will be required for land pooled. The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs has already consented the new regulation.  “A consortium or any individual or developer entity that has pooled together a minimum of 70 per cent land without encroachment would be eligible under the policy. The pooled land parcels must be contiguous. The entire pooled land must be bounded on at least one side by a road of minimum 30 metre right of way”, the new regulation said.

“A minimum two hectares of land will be required by developer entity to apply for this policy.  Each entity or land owner should have valid and lawful owner of the land parcel proposed for pooling,” the regulation said. 

Several farmers who have made consortium to get benefit from land pooling policy, is now worried with this new regulation which make them impossible to avail the benefit.

The policy further states that differential land return in two categories has been replaced with uniform division of land on 60:40 basis.

The Developer Entities / Consortium will retain 60 per cent of land. Of the 60 pe rcent of returned land, 53 per cent will be for residential purposes, 5 per cent for city level commercial use and 2 per cent for public and semi-public use. The remaining 40 per cent pooled land will be kept by the developer for city level services and shall be surrendered encumbrance free to DDA as and when required.

In case of in pooled land parcels which come forward to participate at a later stage, the requirement for surrender of land for city level infrastructure shall be 45 per cent or higher.

The LPP is aimed at getting individuals or a group of land-owners - living in urban villages on Delhi's periphery - to pool their land for infrastructure development.  This is done to develop and bring out the potential of housing and infrastructure to reduce the load on the existing congested and saturated areas of Delhi.

The land pooling policy was notified by the Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD) in September 2013 while the regulations for operationalisation of the policy were approved in May 2015 by the Ministry.

However, the policy was stuck over a few demands by the Delhi Government on getting 10 per cent of the pooled land to develop hospitals and schools.

Under the policy, 89 villages have been declared as urban areas under the Delhi Municipal Act, 1957 and 95 villages as Development Areas, as required for the implementation of land pooling. About 22,000 hectares of land is expected to be pooled which could meet the needs of about 95 lakh people.