HMDA under pressure over e-auction of flats

The e-auction of Rajiv Swagruha flats at Bandlaguda and Pocharam has sparked a controversy as Cabinet ministers, MLAs, corporators and even officials are allegedly pressuring the HMDA to pick a cluster of flats and put it up for online auction, that too in a lottery system.

Officials informed that text messages would be sent to beneficiaries for whom the flats were allotted. This has been raising concerns over the transparency and accountability of the e-auction.

For 3,716 flats, the HMDA has received over

39,000 applications; about

33,000 applications for

2,246 units at Bandlaguda and 6,000 applications for 1,470 flats at Pocharam.

Highly placed sources in the HMDA that ministers and officials had been forcing the officials to make full use of the nontransparent online lottery system, the details of which were not available in the public domain. The leaders have been allegedly forcing them to allocate premium 2BHK and 3 BHK units in clusters or face severe consequences if the houses were allocated on Wednesday.

A senior official said the HMDA would allocate houses through an online lottery. Once the allocation was done, the beneficiary would receive an allotment message on their registered mobile numbers. The official said whoever did not receive the message would have to wait for the next e-auction for the leftover flats.

When asked about the pressure put on by higher authorities and political leaders about the allocation of Rajiv Swagruha flats through a non-transparent online lottery system, where all applicants would in te dark, the official said he was not supposed to give any information to the press. He refused to answer further queries.

● OFFICIALS INFORMED that text messages would be sent to beneficiaries for whom the flats were allotted. This has been raising concerns over the transparency and accountability of the e-auction.