Residents cry foul over flats to Kathputli slum dwellers
group of Rohini residents have decided to approach the Delhi High Court against DDA’s move to reallot flats that were returned by the allottees of the 2014 housing scheme to 1,000 residents of Kathputli Colony.
The decision was taken after the residents held a meeting on Sunday in which hundreds of people from Sector 34 and 35 of Rohini gathered to decide their next line of action.
“We have filed RTIs so that we have a written proof of what DDA wants to do. Once the reply comes, we will approach the high court,” said Drashan Vatsa, vice-president of the Resident Welfare Association of Rohini’s pocket 3, Sector 34.
The dispute started last week after a group of slum-dwellers accompanied by DDA officials visited Rohini’s sectors 34 and 35 in a bus to see the flats that are being offered to them.
The slum dwellers were offered these flats by DDA as the number of beneficiaries of Kathputli Colony Redevelopment Scheme had gone up from 2,641 to nearly 4,000.
Around 3,000 flats in this area are lying vacant after the buyers had surrendered it.
The aggrieved residents said that in 2014, buyers had paid Rs 17 lakh for a low income group DDA flat.
The same flats, they said, were now being allotted under the EWS category to the slum dwellers.
The price of a flat under the EWS category in 2014 was ₹7 lakh.
The residents now want that the ₹10 lakh surplus that they paid to the land agency be returned to them.
“If DDA wants to hand houses to them, they should return ₹10 lakh to us,” said Ashok Kumar, general secretary of the association.
A senior DDA official, however, refuted the claims and said that the flats being allotted to the slum dwellers were made under the EWS scheme in 2014 but later upgraded to the low income group category.
“The flats being offered to them come under EWS only now as its value has depreciated in past three years,” he added.
JP Aggarwal, principal commissioner (land disposal and housing), DDA said that DDA is trying to look into every aspects and they will take any decision only after reaching a consensus.
“We will ensure that the new occupants are given flats in a way that they have a separate entry and exit and live in a different society,” Aggarwal said.