Land acquis­i­tion policy draf­ted
June 01, 2011
Source: Nancy Singh
Prime min­is­ter Man­mo­han Singh-led UPA gov­ern­ment has draf­ted an ambi­tious pro-farmer policy to halt their exploit­a­tion. This is due to tak­ing the protest by farm­ers in sev­eral parts of the coun­try over inad­equate com­pens­a­tion for their land seriously.

“In con­sulta­tion with a sec­tion of state gov­ern­ments and a study of the dis­pute raised by farm­ers, we have draf­ted a com­pre­hens­ive land acquis­i­tion bill to ensure that exploit­a­tion of farm­ers stops. We plan to intro­duce it dur­ing the mon­soon ses­sion of the par­lia­ment,” Vilas­rao Desh­mukh, union rural devel­op­ment min­is­ter, said.

Desh­mukh, former chief min­is­ter of Maha­rashtra, said it has been pro­posed that the role of the state gov­ern­ment in the land acquis­i­tion pro­cess will be min­imal. “Entre­pren­eurs should deal dir­ectly with the farm­ers for acquis­i­tion of land. We expect that 70 per cent of the land should be acquired by the entre­pren­eur by nego­ti­ation with the farm­ers, while the state gov­ern­ment will help him with the rest. We will step in only after he acquires 70 per cent land,” he said.

Desh­mukh said com­pens­a­tion will be at the mar­ket rate and in addi­tion, the entre­pren­uer will have to pay 60 per cent of the mar­ket value as bonus, annu­ity for 30 years, 80 per cent of the profit earned by the entre­pren­eur after com­mer­cial exploit­a­tion of land and job for one mem­ber of the family.

“In Maha­rashtra, if there is a trans­ac­tion on rev­enue land, then the ori­ginal owner of the struc­ture on the land has to pay 50 per cent of the trans­ac­tion value towards unearned income. We are adding a sim­ilar clause to new land acquis­i­tion policy. Against the pro­vi­sion of 50 per cent, we have pro­posed pay­ment of 80 per cent of the profit to the farmer,” Desh­mukh said.

It was found that gen­er­ally there was a dif­fer­ence in the cost of land on the day a noti­fic­a­tion is issued and the day it is actu­ally acquired. As per the land acquis­i­tion act, first noti­fic­a­tion for acquis­i­tion is issued under sec­tion 4, while final land acquis­i­tion takes place under sec­tion 6 and the entire exer­cise takes three years.

“We have pro­posed that com­pens­a­tion should be based on the cost of land when the final noti­fic­a­tion is issued,” he said.

Desh­mukh said in sev­eral cases huge lands are acquired and later sold at a high price. It has now been pro­posed that a high-level com­mit­tee headed by the chief sec­ret­ary should assess the require­ment and only essen­tial area of land should be acquired. The new policy will envis­age that if the acquired land is not util­ized within five years, then it will be returned to the farmer. “We will ensure that only bar­ren land is acquired. We will launch a massive land map­ping exer­cise. As a res­ult, it will not be pos­sible to acquire fer­tile land,” Desh­mukh said.

Government’s role in acquis­i­tion of land will be min­imum 70 per cent of the land will have to be acquired by the indus­trial house, gov­ern­ment will help him in acquis­i­tion of 30 per cent of land

A com­mit­tee headed by the chief sec­ret­ary will assess the require­ment of land. Besides the mar­ket price, a farmer will get 60 per cent of the cost as bonus, annu­ity for 30 years, 80 per cent of the profit earned by the developer after com­mer­cial exploit­a­tion of land.

Only bar­ren land will be avail­able for acquisition.

 

Soon, city will get more power
Source: Hindus­tan Times
Dated: 26 May 11

Delhi’s 1,500 MW Bawana power plant, which has been in con­struc­tion for a few years will finally start com­mer­cial power gen­er­a­tion by June end, power min­is­ter Har­oon Yusuf said on Tues­day, while announ­cing Delhi Transco becom­ing an ISO 9001: 2008 util­ity. This will give Delhi a leap towards self-sus
tain­ab­il­ity in power require­ment. Only 10% of the power is meant for out­side Delhi, while the rest is to be dir­ec­ted to the demands of Delhi’s own dis­tri­bu­tion com­pan­ies who have all signed power pur­chase agree­ments, he said.

“The fuel for the plant has been arranged. This will be a big mile­stone for Delhi,” he told reporters.

Delhi government’s Prag­ati Power Cor­por­a­tion Lim­ited is about get the required gas from the Krishna Godav­ari Basin, offi­cials said. The power plant, already inor­din­ately delayed by months in com­mis­sion­ing, has been run­ning in “open cycle” as a pilot basis, wherein the steam was not being reused to gen­er­ate power to the full capa­city. This pro­cess pro­duces less power and makes it much cost­lier — a reason why dis­coms were not keen on this source all this while.

Apart from the power plant, Yusuf said sup­ply in South Delhi would get much bet­ter because Delhi Transco was about to com­mis­sion its 220 KV sub­sta­tion in Masjid Moth, which was opposed by the res­id­ents there for a few years.

Yusuf said the sub­sta­tion was ready and would be in use. “Transco has taken all neces­sary clear­ances and will be put­ting it to use soon. This will make power sup­ply much sta­bil­ized in south Delhi areas,” he said. The sub­sta­tion will make sup­ply bet­ter in Vas­ant Kunj, Okhla, Badarpur and nearby areas.

Paint­ing a rosy pic­ture for the remain­ing sum­mer months, Yusuf said there was no dearth of power in the sys­tem. “Dis­coms have been asked to make sure that local faults are min­imum and are atten­ded to promptly, so that there is no incon­veni­ence to the people,” he added.

 

Soon, a nodal agency to take care of Capital’s water bod­ies
Source: Hindus­tan Times
Dated: 24 May 2011

The Cap­ital is set to get a water bod­ies author­ity, a nodal agency to take care of the more than 600 small and large water bod­ies cur­rently under dif­fer­ent gov­ern­ment agen­cies. Delhi Devel­op­ment Author­ity (DDA), pub­lic works depart­ment (PWD), the Archae­olo­gical Sur­vey of India (ASI) and the Muni­cipa
l Cor­por­a­tion of Delhi (MCD) are few of the main agen­cies that are sup­posed to care for the water bodies.

The Delhi gov­ern­ment is con­tem­plat­ing a water body author­ity for the Cap­ital that would act as a coördin­ator for all agen­cies involved. “This would be formed on the lines of the Lake Author­ity in Karnataka,” said an offi­cial from the envir­on­ment department.

The gov­ern­ment is con­tem­plat­ing this as a logical pro­gres­sion of the steer­ing com­mit­tee formed as part of the ongo­ing case in the Delhi high court about Delhi’s water bodies.

After a long drawn court pro­cess amid lack of clar­ity over the exact num­ber of water bod­ies fol­lowed by an exhaust­ive sur­vey, the gov­ern­ment had agreed there are 629 water bod­ies in Delhi. Earlier this year, the Delhi gov­ern­ment had acceded that as many as 232 water bod­ies of the total 629 water bod­ies iden­ti­fied by vari­ous gov­ern­ment agen­cies can­not be revived for dif­fer­ent reasons.

The water body author­ity will work for revival of water bod­ies, also ensure there is no encroach­ment in sur­round­ing areas and increase green cover around it. The Delhi Parks and Garden Soci­ety would be mon­it­or­ing the pro­gress for the same. The gov­ern­ment can bring either a gov­ern­ment order or even a bill for the form­a­tion of the author­ity, the offi­cial said.

Keshav Chandra, who has recently taken addi­tional charge of the envir­on­ment depart­ment, said, “The author­ity would not just take care of the removal of encroach­ment or green­ing of the sur­round­ing area but also ensure the water qual­ity improves in the water body.”

“We plan to use bio­lo­gical treat­ment to improve water qual­ity and have already iden­ti­fied a tech­no­logy developed by National Envir­on­mental Engin­eer­ing Research Insti­tute (NEERI),” he said.

 

Cash in on the high­ways
Source: Hindus­tan Times
Date: 21^st May 2011

The northern-southern peri­pheral and Gurgaon-Faridabad oads mean easy con­nectiv­ity to Delhi and could trans­late nto gal­lop­ing prop­erty prices in the areas they touch

Simirin Singh, an IT pro­fes­sional work­ing in Manesar, travels from Dwarka every day. He hates the long com­mute and can­not wait for work to be com­pleted on the North­ern Peri­pheral Road (NPR) as it will reduce his com­mute time to half.

Snighadh Sharma, another IT pro­fes­sional work­ing in the same area, has inves­ted in one of the hous­ing pro­jects com­ing up along the NPR.
While he bought the apart­ment a year ago for R2800 per sq ft, prices have now jumped to R3200 per sq ft after the con­tract to con­struct the NPR was given to Indi­abulls earlier this year. It will also be inter­est­ing to see how prices will move once con­struc­tion pro­gresses along the 150-metre wide and the 18-km-long NPR.

Once that hap­pens, it will not only be a major dir­ect link with Delhi (from Dwarka side) along­side NH8, but will play a major role in rede­fin­ing the real estate dynam­ics of Gur­gaon. Inter­est­ingly, pro­jects that were going at R3600 per sq ft along the NPR before the con­tract was gran­ted, shot up to R4500 per sq ft soon after the fin­an­cial bids were opened.

Going for­ward, as con­struc­tion for the NPR pro­gresses, res­id­en­tial sec­tors along this road are likely to see a spurt in prices due to the favour­able loc­a­tion . Clearly, the effect on land val­ues is expec­ted to be sim­ilar to the impact NH8 had on prop­erty prices in areas close to it once it became operational.

“There has already been a run-up in valu­ation, at least 20% since Janu­ary and in cer­tain cases 35%,“ points out Anckur Srivasttava of Gen­Real Advisers, adding one can eas­ily expect a 30% increase in prices in the next 12 months for a decent loc­a­tion, developer and real pro­gress on the site.

Accord­ing to the new Gur­gaon Mas­ter Plan, about 50 new sec­tors are to come up along the NPR stretch, which will include res­id­en­tial, com­mer­cial and insti­tu­tional devel­op­ment. These are likely to com­prise of almost 10,000 res­id­en­tial units.
Some of the res­id­en­tial sec­tors that face the express­way include 113, 111, 110A, 110, 105, 104, 102, 99 and 37 D, among others.

Besides, there is the com­mer­cial cor­ridor which could throw up a sup­ply of more than five to six mil­lion sq ft of office space over the next few years, and the NPR would facil­it­ate faster access. The NPR will also lead to the SEZs planned to be built near the Gur­gaon, Pataudi road, Manesar, Dharuhera and beyond.

The NPR is seen to have more poten­tial than NH8 because it is linked to the growth story of Delhi. The first sec­tor is barely 4 kms from Delhi’s inter­na­tional air­port. The express­way will also con­nect the 100-metre and 80-metre urban express roads under the Delhi Mas­ter Plan 2021. The con­flu­ence zone is likely to fuel con­struc­tion of premium hous­ing in the catch­ment areas. A dip­lo­matic enclave is also pro­posed in the new sec­tors of Dwarka, barely a kilo­metre away from the zone being alloc­ated for farmhouses.

Accord­ing to Nitin Yadav, HUDA admin­is­trator, “The NPR has cer­tain advant­ages over the exten­ded Golf Course Road. Some of these sec­tors also have good con­nectiv­ity with the air­port and Dwarka. Bet­ter infra­struc­ture is expec­ted to come up here and bring in bet­ter pos­sib­il­it­ies for hous­ing,“ Yadav adds. Refer­ring to the 4 km bot­tle­neck along the stretch, he says “We are hop­ing that the remain­ing 4 km will be cleared soon.“

At present, prop­er­ties com­mand prices of R8000 to R10,000 per sq ft on the Golf Course Road and R5000-plus per sq ft on the Exten­ded Golf Course Road. The cur­rent price range of some pro­jects launched in this belt is cur­rently start­ing from R2600 to R3000 per sq ft. This price band caters primar­ily to the mid-segment along the NPR stretch, though vil­las, too, are on offer here in the range of R1 crore plus.

Accord­ing to Nar­en­dra Geh­laut, MD, Indi­abulls Real Estate Ltd, that has pro­jects in sec­tors 103 and 110 ­ both in the advanced stages of con­struc­tion ­ “the loc­a­tion is close to the air­port and under the new MPD 2021, the stretch is dir­ectly con­nec­ted to the 100 m road. Going for­ward, prices in this area are bound to go up.“

The QVC Realty Com­pany also has two pro­jects in the area. Both are joint ven­tures, one with Sobha Developers and Chin­tels and the other with Uppals. If the rates in DLF Phase I and II are R1,50,000 per sq yard, prices in the new sec­tors
are less than R50,000 per sq yard. In sec­tors 99 and 106/109, prices hover around R45,000.
These rates are almost at two third discount.

The com­pany has 106 acres in Sec­tor 99 and 153 acres in sec­tor 106. “If new infra­struc­ture is put in place ahead of demand it can open up a lot of land that can be developed and ration­al­ise the prices. Once the road is up and run­ning, there is no reason wh prices will not be doubled,“ points out Prakash Gurbax­ani, MD and CEO of QVC Realty.

Earth Copia, a pro­ject by Earth Infra­struc­ture, loc­ated barely half a kilo­metre from th NPR, is com­ing up with semilux­ury apart­ments in Sec­tor 11 at a rate of R4150 per sq ft.“ Th prices along the stretch are expec­ted to appre­ci­ate by 4050% in the com­ing two to three years,“ says Vikas Gupta, direc tor, Earth Infrastructure.

News paper link: Click Here

 

Govt plans 4 new AIIMS in Delhi
Source: Indian Express
Dated: 16^th May 2011

THE Delhi gov­ern­ment wants to build four new hos­pit­als in the Cap­ital on the lines of the multis­pe­cialty All India Insti­tute of Med­ical Sci­ences in South Delhi, Health offi­cials said.

Delhi Health Min­is­ter A K Walia has writ­ten to the Union Health min­istry pro­pos­ing four pos­sible sites in South and Outer Delhi for these hospitals.

The Delhi gov­ern­ment wants to explore ways in which the Cent­ral gov­ern­ment can help set up the hos­pit­als and also oper­ate them, a Health offi­cial added.

The let­ter, writ­ten on May 5 to union Health Min­is­ter Ghu­lam Nabi Azad, cites an urgent need to upgrade health infra­struc­ture in the city ‚where demand cur­rently far exceeds supply.

A senior Health offi­cial said the Delhi gov­ern­ment has offered unused plots owned by the Health depart­ment as pos­sible sites for the hospitals.

“We have a 19-acre plot in Kan­jhawala, a 20-acre plot near Rao Tula Ram Marg, a 14-acre plot and two oth­ers each meas­ur­ing 7 acre in Sir­aspur,” the offi­cial said.

The Delhi gov­ern­ment cur­rently oper­ates 26 hos­pit­als, and Health offi­cials say they are already hard pressed to boost infra­struc­ture and improve oper­a­tions at these units.

Some hos­pit­als, for which found­a­tion stones were laid over the last dec­ade, are also yet to be con­struc­ted, while build­ings for two oth­ers have been con­struc­ted but health ser­vices yet to be rolled out.

 

Liv­ing it up in west Delhi
Source: Hindus­tan Times
Dated: 13^th MAy 2011

From a dreary corner to a hap­pen­ing hub, west Delhi is all set to emerge as a hot­spot on the Capital’s shop­ping and cul­tural map. With sev­eral new recre­ational and tour­ism pro­jects com­ing up almost sim­ul­tan­eously, it is ready to give a stiff com­pet­i­tion to south Delhi. While new shop­ping malls sell
ing prom­in­ent brands at Rajouri Garden and Subhash Nagar attract people even from south and cent­ral Delhi, an upcom­ing camp­ing site and water sports facil­ity at Kan­gan­heri near Chhawla, a soft adven­ture park along the national high­way 8, a rep­lica of INA’s Dilli Haat at Jana­kpuri, a foot­ball sta­dium and a Hab­itat Centre at Dwarka besides a cul­tural centre right in the heart of west Delhi at Raja Garden are going to change the way people enter­tain them­selves in this part of the city.

“Earlier, people used to think life exists only in south Delhi. But the good part is that facil­it­ies like shop­ping malls, bars, and good infra­struc­ture is now evenly spread in west Delhi and it will con­tinue to grow,” said Anshuman Magazine, chair­man and man­aging dir­ector, CB Richard Ellis South Asia, a global real estate consultancy.

Though it came up much before the area across Yamuna river star­ted devel­op­ing, res­id­ents believe west Delhi lost out in the race for devel­op­ment to south and east Delhi. While south Delhi is con­sidered “over­de­veloped” with east Delhi fol­low­ing close behind, people liv­ing in west Delhi believe it is time the gov­ern­ment shifts its focus on west Delhi.

“The neigh­bour­hood cul­tural centre was con­struc­ted in 2005 but it is lying unused. We have been hear­ing about the Muni­cipal Cor­por­a­tion of Delhi’s plans to con­struct a Nigam Hab­itat Centre at Rajouri Garden dis­trict centre but it seems to be in cold stor­age. Cul­tur­ally, people in west Delhi are as tal­en­ted as in any other part of the city. But they need a place of their own,” said Pra­tap Sehgal, a prom­in­ent Hindi writer.

“It really sounds good that the gov­ern­ment is try­ing to revive the neigh­bour­hood cul­tural centre.”

Tour­ism depart­ment offi­cials agree that a num­ber of places of tour­ist attrac­tion com­ing up sim­ul­tan­eously will change the per­cep­tion of people about west Delhi. Apart from the neigh­bour­hood cul­tural centre and Dilli Haat, the Delhi Tour­ism and Trans­port­a­tion Devel­op­ment Cor­por­a­tion (DTTDC)is also tak­ing up the devel­op­ment of a camp­ing site at Kan­gan­heri and a water sports facil­ity at Chhawla.

“We are not giv­ing any pref­er­en­tial treat­ment to west Delhi. It is just a mat­ter of coin­cid­ence that so many good pro­jects are com­ing up together in that part of the city. The chal­lenge now is to make them pop­u­lar,” said GG Sax­ena, man­aging dir­ector of Delhi Tour­ism and Trans­port­a­tion Devel­op­ment Corporation.

http://epaper.hindustantimes.com/PUBLICATIONS/HT/HD/2011/05/13/ArticleHtmls/Living-it-up-in-west-Delhi-13052011004002.shtml?Mode=1

 

A house for Mr Every­one
Source: Hindus­tan Times
Date: 12^th May 2011

DREAMS FULFILLED Three new sub-cities planned; mix of multi-storeyed and low-rise build­ings to bring in massive change
If own­ing a house in Delhi has been your biggest dream and the DDA’s hous­ing schemes failed you every time, do not lose heart. The next few years will throw a plenty of options at you to pick an apart­ment of your choice. And most of these options will be in the west of west Delhi, close to the area b
order­ing Haryana.

In Mas­ter Plan 2021, the Delhi Devel­op­ment Author­ity (DDA) has envis­aged five new sub-cities in the Cap­ital, three of them will come up in the rural part of west Delhi encom­passing vil­lages like Kan­jhawala, Najafgarh, Nan­gloi, Bawana and neigh­bour­ing areas. Of 60,000 hec­tares of land to be used for the devel­op­ment of new sub-cities in Delhi, about 40,000 hec­tares are in west Delhi. A 100-metre wide urban express­way road that will ori­gin­ate at NH-1 and cut through NH-10, NH-8 and go up to NH-2, will be the life­line of all these new zones.

Accord­ing to DDA’s former com­mis­sioner (plan­ning) AK Jain, west Delhi is the only poten­tial area for urban devel­op­ment in the Cap­ital city. With its vast expanse of land bank and prox­im­ity to the inter­na­tional air­port, the Jaipur high­way and Gur­gaon — the Sil­icon Val­ley of north India — it will turn in to a world-class city in next few years.

“Unlike south Delhi, this part of the city will not have any prob­lem of water and power. The traffic con­ges­tion that we see in other parts of the city will not be a case in west Delhi. State– of-the-art plan­ning has been done and mass rapid transit sys­tem has been integ­rated,” Jain said.

In fact, after south Delhi, west Delhi is the area where real estate has developed in a big way in the past few years and will con­tinue to grow.

The res­id­en­tial prop­er­ties in Dwarka are priced as high as in south Delhi. In the recent hous­ing scheme that the DDA launched, the three-bedroom flats were priced as high as R1.2 crore a unit, second only to Vas­ant Kunj, which is a posh south Delhi address.

With Delhi’s pop­u­la­tion likely to touch 23 mil­lion by 2021, huge land in west Delhi offers massive expan­sion plans.

Accord­ing to senior DDA offi­cials, the Cap­ital requires 15 lakh dwell­ing units by 2020. Since the gov­ern­ment agen­cies do not have the capa­city to take up this huge task, the gov­ern­ment will involve private sec­tor to develop the area on public-private par­ti­cip­a­tion basis.

Though the DDA is yet to come up with a land policy, which allows the pock­ets to be developed as res­id­en­tial, com­mer­cial or green­belts, sources said private real estate developers have already star­ted buy­ing huge chunks of land dir­ectly from farmers.

“Most of the devel­op­ment pro­jects that Delhi is likely to wit­ness in the next few years will be in west Delhi. But it will take time. It is not hap­pen­ing in the next 2 – 3 years,” said Anshuman Magazine, chair­man and man­aging dir­ector, CB Richard Ellis, South Asia, a global real estate con­sult­ing company.

With Delhi’s devel­op­ment evenly bal­anced, Magazine said, west Delhi too have a good share of schools, com­mer­cial estab­lish­ments, malls, retail out­lets and health facil­it­ies. The prox­im­ity to Gur­gaon and the air­port are added advant­age for west Delhi.

The new hous­ing pro­jects in west Delhi are likely to be a mix of multi-storeyed and low-rise build­ings. DDA offi­cials accept that land is selling at a premium and big real estate com­pan­ies are try­ing to acquire and hold on to as much land as possible.

“Even the pro­jects that are com­ing up are high-end lux­ury and mid-segment hous­ing, which would give stiff com­pet­i­tion to Gur­gaon and Noida,” a real estate expert said.

http://epaper.hindustantimes.com/PUBLICATIONS/HT/HD/2011/05/12/ArticleHtmls/A-house-for-Mr-Everyone-12052011004001.shtml?Mode=1