Chandigarh Housing Board to urges administrator for revival of old projects
Chandigarh Housing Board has prepared a presentation with the said request and will be forwarded to the administrator next week
With no new realty project in the past eight years, Chandigarh Housing Board (CHB) authorities will urge UT’s new administrator, Gulab Chand Kataria, to revive their projects.
The board has prepared a presentation with the said request and will be forwarded to the administrator next week.
A senior officer of the board said, ‘We have already prepared a presentation, urging to revive our projects which are on hold. We also want that administration should give us more projects so that the capability of our engineers can be utilised. We were to give presentation on August 10, but our turn did not come up and now will present next week.”
In August last year, former UT administrator Banwarilal Purohit had put CHB’s ambitious Sector-53 General Housing Scheme on hold, terming it unnecessary. Consequently, the board cancelled the ₹200-crore tenders floated on August 2 last year for the construction of 340 flats on nine acres of land.
Purohit had also told CHB not to pursue another housing scheme at IT Park, which is caught in environmental clearance tangles. In October 2022 , the Union ministry of environment, forest and climate change had refused to approve the scheme, featuring 728 flats in three categories, stating that the project site falls in the eco-sensitive zone of the Sukhna Wildlife Sanctuary.
Even in May this year, the Punjab and Haryana high court directed the administration to allot land to UT employees, who had applied for the 2008 Self-Financing Employee Housing Scheme, at the same rate as in 2008. The UT administration is in a fix as they are going to suffer a loss of nearly ₹2,000 crore. In its recent orders, the court also directed the administration to construct the flats within one year. UT administration has now moved the apex court against the high court orders.
The last CHB project saw it offer 200 two-bedroom flats in Sector 51 for ₹69 lakh each in 2016.
With no projects, the board is also heading towards a major financial crunch. The board will encash money from its fixed deposits of ₹450 crore, starting next month, to meet its expenses.
Every month, the board it requires ₹3.5 crore to pay salaries of its 400 employees, including those on a regular and contractual basis. The monthly income from all collective sources hovers around the ₹1-crore mark, as the major earner, sale deed money of residential and commercial properties, has fallen flat in recent years.
Once cash-rich, this UT administration undertaking was set up in 1976 with the primary objective of providing reasonably priced and good-quality housing to the residents of the then-burgeoning city.
Budget slashed to ₹100 cr from ₹350 cr
As per records, the budget has also been slashed to ₹100 crore from the usual ballpark of ₹350 crore for the year 2024-25. Notably, in the budget estimate for the year 2023-24, the board had projected its income to stand at ₹47 crore against its spending of ₹33 crore—a profit of only ₹14 crore. Expenditure, however, was estimated to be 45% higher than the previous year. While receipts were to be up 58%, targets were not met.
No board meeting in last 15 months
Surprisingly, besides having no major venture in the works and no complete project to show for the past eight years, the board has not convened its board meeting for the past 15 months. Last year, the board was able to convene just two board meetings in February and May.
The last CHB project saw it offer 200 two-bedroom flats in Sector 51 for ₹69 lakh each in 2016.
As of March 2019, CHB had completed the construction of a total of 67,565 houses across various categories, including rehabilitation schemes. The board, which is now functioning from a five-star rated seven-storey green building in Sector 9, was constructed at the cost of nearly ₹60 crore.