Housing and Urban Affairs (HUA) Minister Hardeep Puri on Monday said the pace of the PM-UDAY scheme — for granting ownership rights for properties in Delhi’s unauthorised colonies — needed to pick up as only around 3,000 conveyance deeds and authorisation slips had been issued since it was launched in December 2019.
The scheme was targeted towards the 50 lakh residents of unauthorised colonies in the Capital, which was expected to yield eight lakh applications, said Mr. Puri. However, as on January 1, 3.6 lakh people had registered on the Delhi Development Authority’s portal for the scheme and 1,487 conveyance deeds and 1,659 authorisation slips had been issued, according to data shared by Mr. Puri.
Asked about the progress of the scheme on Monday, Mr. Puri said the number of registrations would have been higher if not for the pandemic. He said the DDA would be coming out with development control norms for these colonies by March.
Without development control norms on one hand and protection from demolition accorded via the National Capital Territory of Delhi Laws (Special Provisions) Act, Mr. Puri said the residents of the colonies did not have “the same incentive to register”.
He said the matter was reviewed when the government recently decided to extend the protections under the Act, which was set to expire on December 31, 2020, for another three years. “We have reviewed it. The pace needs to pick up a bit”.
HUA Secretary Durga Shanker Mishra said the DDA was working on a strategy and would be holding public consultations regarding the development control norms.