Land allotment to coop societies to be revived

Pradeep Sharma

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, July 25

The Khattar Government is set to revive the allotment of land to cooperative group housing societies (GHS) across Haryana after 11 years.

Official sources said the issue would be deliberated at a high-level meeting of the Haryana Urban Development Authority(HUDA) under the chairmanship of its chairman and Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar here on July 27. “After a decision on the issue, modalities for the allotment of land to the GHS would be worked out to coincide with the golden jubilee celebrations of Haryana’s creation,” the sources said.

The last land allotment policy to the GHS in Haryana came in 2005 during the tenure of former Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda. However, there was no land allotment policy for cooperative societies in subsequent years with several senior BJP leaders, who are now occupying ministerial posts, alleging that the Hooda Government was bending backwards to benefit private builders at the cost of the cooperative housing movement. Earlier, Haryana had come out with land allotment policies for the GHS in 1990,1998, 2001 and 2003.

Saying that the cooperative housing movement needed state’s patronage vis-à-vis private builders, BK Sanghi, a Panchkula-based realty expert, said the allotment of land to the GHS was long overdue and the BJP Government should expedite the matter so that middle and lower middle classes could hope to own a house in urban areas.

BK Sanghi, however, demanded the rationalisation of the land allotment rates to cooperative societies announced by HUDA in 2013. While, the rates for Gurgaon touched 16,700 per square metre, it was followed by Faridabad (Rs 16,500), Rohtak (Rs 15,400) and Panchkula (Rs 11,000).

In the 2005 policy, the land allotment rates for Gurgaon varied between Rs 4,000 to Rs 6,000 per square metre, between Rs 3,600 and Rs 5,400 for Panchkula and between Rs 2,880 and Rs 4,320 for Faridabad.