Army welfare housing body faces land crunch

The shortage of land was there as Pune is turning out to be a favourite destination for retired personnel to settle down. For Naib Subedar working in the record office at Karnataka,Hanamant Patil,Pune throws up number of opportunities. “I plan to settle down in Pune after my retirement for education of my children. I have registered for a flat in Hadapsar and hope to get the possession soon,” he said.

Interestingly even as major chunk of land in Pune is defence land with nearly 1,520 acres of army land available for use,AWHO is unable to get the land as army treats the construction of houses as only a welfare measure. Project director of the AWHO,Pune,Col A K Chaubey,said that the rules don’t permit AWHO to acquire the army land. This was reiterated by defence spokesman,Prashant Patrabe,who said that there is no policy to allot the defence land to AWHO.

So,the AWHO is forced to buy civilian land at hefty cost . It purchased around 30 acres for Rs 14 crore in 1999 at Hadapsar to construct the houses for retired and serving defence personnel in Pune. On the land while two separate complexes of 144 flats and 195 flats have already come up,AWHO is in the process of issuing bids for construction of another complex of 528 flats.

According to officials in the AWHO,the land at Hadapsar on which they are carrying out the constructions was sufficient for use for three years only. Officials in the AWHO say that with each acre of land costing nearly Rs 2-3 crore in Pune,AWHO has kept open the option of suspending the construction work here after three years in case its plan of buying the flats directly from builders to be handed over to defence personnel doesn’t go through. As of now,AWHO is buying the land on its own while the construction of flats is done by builders.