The Delhi government is trying to buy 80 flats in the Commonwealth Games village for accommodation of its senior officials.
The Public Works Department (PWD) of the government has sought the intervention of Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung to purchase the flats from Delhi Development Authority (DDA) at concessional prices and not at the existing market value – ranging between Rs 2.5 crore to Rs 7 crore.
“Since Lieutenant Governor is also the head of the DDA, we hope to get some concession in prices,” said an official.
The high-end flats, if bought by the Delhi government, would be used to accommodate secretary-level bureaucrats, he said.
Talks between the government and the DDA over purchasing the flats in multi-storey towers have been off and on for almost a year. Initially, the Delhi government was keen to buy 30 flats but the communication with the DDA virtually broke down due to lack of unanimity on prices, said an official.
The fresh move of the Delhi government to pick up 80 flats with Jung’s help is spurred by a recent letter written by the DDA to the PWD, exploring the government’s interest on picking up the flats.
“The suggestion from the DDA was promptly accepted by the PWD which responded with a letter saying that it should quickly fix the prices for the flats,” said a PWD official, adding that the flat owning agency is yet to respond to its request.
Officials want Jung, who is the chairman of the DDA and also the head of the Delhi government during president’s rule, to help sort out the pricing hurdle in a joint meeting between functionaries of both the sides.
The flats were built by a private builder for the DDA under an incentive-sharing model. The DDA got a large share of the built-up flats which it has been auctioning in phases.
“Over four dozen flats in the CWG Village have already been sold to various government agencies and corporations,” said a Delhi government official, citing State Bank of India and Delhi State Cooperative Bank as some of the bidders in the last auction.
During one of the auctions in 2012, the civic agency managed to collect nearly Rs 400 crore by selling over 87 flats which housed the athletes during the 2010 CWG in the sprawling Games village built on the Yamuna bank near Nizamuddin Bridge.
In the case of some flats, the bids in the auction were much higher than the base price and the entire process yielded nearly 50 per cent more money than what the DDA was expecting, said a Raj Niwas official.