4,900 football fields: In Delhi’s land pooling zones, that’s the area lost to unauthorised construction

This is the first time that the scale of settlements that have cropped up in the national capital, in contravention of the zoning regulations laid out by the Master Plan 2021, has come out. The 3,511 hectares — mostly agricultural land — is part of the 20,600 hectares of land in sectors earmarked for the policy.

The DDA did not respond to questions sent by The Indian Express about why the agency has allowed unauthorised construction to come up and what action the agency has taken against it till now.

The land pooling policy, first introduced back in 2007 and the latest regulations for which came out in 2018, have seen little success on the ground.

Under the policy, DDA was aiming to do away with costly land acquisition and construction of housing and amenities, and instead bring in the private sector to build homes. It had envisaged that the policy would lead to the creation of world-class neighbourhoods with high-rise group buildings that could house 85 lakh people in the rural belt — areas such as Narela, Bawana and Najafgarh. However, work has not started in even a single sector till now.

Amendments in the policy, which will make it easier to move forward with development work, were sent by the DDA to the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs in 2022 but have not seen any movement.

The outer area of the city has, instead, witnessed haphazard urbanisation with steady population growth. For instance, electors in the Assembly constituency of Burari have grown from 2.88 lakh in 2015 to 4.26 lakh in 2025, data from the Election Commission of India shows — a massive increase of 1.38 lakh electors. Matiala has also seen electors grow from 3.47 lakh to 4.54 lakh in the last decade.

As part of the policy, the DDA has delineated 138 sectors into six zones (P 1, P 2, N, K 1, L and J) in northern, western, and southern Delhi.

The maximum unauthorised construction has happened in Zone K-I, in which out of 2,836 hectares, 1,008 hectares have seen unauthorised construction. Zone K-I is in West Delhi and covers villages such as Mundka, Bakkar Wala, Baprola and Nangloi Jat.

Zone L, which lies in Southwest Delhi and is the largest of the land pooling zones — spread over 8,649 hectares of land — has also seen a large increase in unauthorised construction. 928.48 hectares has been taken over in the zone in which villages such as Najafgarh, Dhansa and Chhawla fall.

Zone P-II in North Delhi has seen 806 hectares of its land lost to unauthorised construction, out of 2,640 hectares.

Zone P-I, where DDA’s Narela sub-city project is located, has seen 541 hectares of land out of 1,857 hectares disappear under unauthorised construction.

In Zone N of Northwest Delhi, 226 hectares out of 6,496 hectares have been built on without any approvals.

These unauthorised settlements, which have come up, are excluding the 1,731 unauthorised colonies which are under the purview of the Pradhan Mantri-Unauthorised Colonies in Delhi Awas Adhikar Yojana (PM-UDAY).

PM-UDAY, which was brought ahead of the 2020 Delhi elections, sought to confer ownership rights on about 50 lakh people who reside in unauthorised colonies in the national capital, which suffer from “problems of haphazard growth, lack of public amenities and social infrastructure, unsafe structures and unhygienic conditions”.

When contacted by The Indian Express, BJP MPs from Northwest Delhi and West Delhi, Yogender Chandoliya and Kamaljeet Sehrawat, respectively, said they are not aware of any such construction.

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