Mumbai: On Sunday the Mumbai Board of Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (MHADA) held lottery draw and declared names of lucky winners out of 66,080 applicants, who applied for 217 houses located at Sahakar Nagar in Chembur and Kopari Village in Powai. Uday Samant, chairman, MHADA stated that all 217 houses were sold out one hundred per cent. Interestingly, among 217 lucky winners declared, two were MHADA employees named Ganesh Khairnar and Prashant Gaikwad.
Winner Khairnar who lives in a rented apartment in Kurla with his family was trying his luck in Mumbai’s MHADA lottery for past 23 years and his wish of owning a house in Mumbai came true this year. “I decided not to give up and every year I applied in the housing lottery. Now, I can finally say I am a real Mumbaikar,” he replied very excitedly. Khairnar won the lottery house in Chembur. Similarly, Gaikwad who lives in a staff quarters away from his family, excitedly expressed that he will now settle with his family in the city.
While Sunday’s lottery draw for houses brought happiness to winners, several other ill-fated homebuyers expressed their disappointment towards MHADA for offering handful of houses. Abhishekh Sinha, an angry homebuyer, who was trying for the past three years in the lottery draw slammed the housing authority for offering handful of houses. He said, “The demand for MHADA affordable houses is very high, still they failed to fulfil the requirement. If the situation continues, then how can they (state and centre) fulfil their promises of housing for all by 2022?”
Another unlucky homebuyer Abhijeet Alkarnik said, MHADA is a government agency and it should put in efforts on providing more number of houses to needy people like him. “Looking at the numbers of houses offered every year and the applicants in row for one single house why the government has not come up with any solution to bridge the gap between the demand and supply so far. In this lottery 66,000 people had applied, which I read it in thenews, that means 300 people were in queue.” remarked an annoyed Alkarnik.
Currently, Alkarnik lives with his parents in a small house and had applied for the lottery house in the lower income group category. It is a fact well known that in the last few years, the number of houses offered in the lottery system by the Mumbai Board has seen a decline. Adding to the crisis, the board does not have housing stock to conduct next lottery draw according to MHADA sources. Wherein Uday Samant, Chairman of MHADA speaking to the media, stated he has already ordered to conduct a survey of all ongoing redevelopment projects on MHADA layout under scheme 33(5) of the development control regulation (DCR) in the city.
“Those housing projects which got approval before 2017, we will determine if MHADA has any share of houses to obtain from these developers. If so then those houses will be opened up for sale in the next lottery draw. Within eight days a systematic approach will be adopted by the MHADA officials to find out the number of housing stock MHADA is inclined to obtain,” said Samant.
He was answering to the questions over the policy decision taken by state in 2017 over allowing developers to undertake redevelopment on MHADA layouts by charging only premium on floor space index of three and they no more required to give some of the housing units back to MHADA, leading to decline in the number of housing stocks available with the Mumbai board.