As per PMC officials, of the total 2918 flats constructed to be allotted under PMAY(U) for deserving poor families, about 850 flats still remain unsold, after two rounds of allotment and opening up for the general public who had not made the application initially.

ATIKH RASHID

After failing to find customers from among the common citizens to buy the flats constructed by Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) under Pradhan Mantri Aawas Yojana -Urban (PMAY-U), the civic body has now decided to allot the about 850 unsold flats to the staffers of Pune Mahanagar Parivahan Mahamandal Limited (PMPML).

As per PMC officials, of the total 2918 flats constructed to be allotted under PMAY(U) for deserving poor families, about 850 flats still remain unsold, after two rounds of allotment and opening up for the general public who had not made the application initially.

Of the three sites – namely, Hadapsar, Kharadi and Vadgaon Khurd – most of the unsold flats are at Hadapsar (three proposed buildings in Hingane Mala) and Vadgaon Khurd areas.

The unsold flats will now be allotted to PMPML staffers and the civic body has also received about 1300 applications from the hopefuls, of which 661 applications were found eligible for allotment.

“There are about 150-200 applications of the PMPML staffers which have minor deficiencies and can become eligible for allotment after we receive supplementary documents,” said Dinesh Rokade, Joint-Director in-charge of implementation of PMAY (Urban) in PMC.

Under Affordable Housing in Partnership (AHP) vertical of PMAY(U), PMC has taken up the development of five housing projects comprising of 2,918 apartments at three different locations in the city namely Hadapsar, Kharadi and Vadgaon Khurd. When the civic body started receiving the applications in 2017, over 40,000 hopefuls from EWS families had applied to benefit from the scheme. In October 2020, PMC announced the first list of beneficiaries by drawing a lottery, and asked them to book the homes – cost ranging between Rs 8.4 lakh to Rs 10.2 lakh – by paying 10 per cent booking amount within a month. However, at the end of this period, only 731 individuals claimed the homes (although about 1400 of them had collected the provisional allotment letters from the PMC) while the rest gave the opportunity a pass.

On December 7, the PMC published another list of 2187 fresh allottees from the waiting list. By January 6, when the deadline to book the home came to an end, only 357 of them had booked the offered home.

At the end of the second round of allotment by the end of January 2021, a total of 1830 homes still remain unbooked as allottees did not come forward to book the flat by paying 10 per cent of the cost.

Following this, the PMC opened up the homes to anyone who fulfils the EWS criteria (income less than 3 lakh per annum and not owning a house anywhere in Maharashtra) and had not applied to benefit under the scheme. Even after the end of this round, about 850 apartments remained unbooked.