DDA will simultaneously start a survey alongside redevelopment to identify the beneficiaries in these slums.
NEW DELHI: The project which is soon to start will look to begin in-situ development of six slums. The redevelopment will take place on a public-private partnership (PPP) basis.
The land-owning agency is soon to float tenders to hire consultants to prepare detailed project reports, said a DDA official. The six slums are JJ clusters in Rohini’s sector 18 and 19, Dilshad Garden, Kirti Nagar and Shalimar Bagh and Kusumpur Pahadi in Vasasnt Vihar.
DDA will also conduct a survey to identify the beneficiaries in these slums. According to officials, the process to hire construction firms will start by the end of this year.
“We will soon float tenders to appoint consultants to assess the feasibility of the project in terms of financial and existing planning norms. The consultant will also prepare the tender documents for all the projects,” said a DDA official aware of the development.
Of the 675 slums in Delhi, 499 are on the central government land, including DDA-owned land.
For these in-situ development projects, DDA plans to hire a private developer who will construct multi-storey housing facility for slum dwellers. This will also include a commercial component on the land where the slum exists. The developer will use the commercial component to recover the total cost of the project. DDA will decide the time period for the land to be leased to the developer.
Further Developments:
After the construction work at the Kathputli Colony redevelopment project, which started last year, DDA decided to replicate the model. The land-owning agency had passed a policy in this regard last year.
“We have identified 23 clusters to be taken up for rehabilitation. In the second phase, we will take up 11 slum clusters. The idea is to de redevelopment largely on PPP basis. But we also have to see the feasibility of the project. There could be areas where the existing land would not be sufficient to accommodate all the people. In such cases, we will have to adopt a different strategy,” said an official.
The land-owning agency also plans to hire another agency to identify beneficiaries in each project. For this, it will look for a firm which has expertise in the field. “We are planning to hire the same agency which does the survey for Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board (DUSIB). We have initiated the process to hire the firm.” the official said.
Dunu Roy, director at Hazards Centre, which provides professional services to community and labour organisations, says that DDA should assess the success of PPP-based rehabilitation of slums. “The Kathputli project has just started. We don’t know whether it is going to be a success. The DDA should first review its experience with all the rehabilitation projects it has undertaken till now,” he said.