IAS and IPS see window in tighter MHADA rules, rush to high-end Maitri society

According to documents obtained under the Right to Information Act, 19 officials from the Indian Administrative Service, Indian Police Service, Indian Revenue Service and Indian Railway Accounts Service have submitted their names to MHADA.

Some of the aspirants for the two-bedroom flats include Amitabh Rajan, additional chief secretary in the home department; Dhananjay Kamalakar, joint commissioner of police (Law and Order); Rajvardhan Sinha, additional commissioner of police in the Economic Offences Wing; Rajesh Agrawal, principal secretary in the IT department, and Vikas Kharge, secretary to the chief minister.

On the eve of the last assembly election in August 2009, the state government had decided to hand over land meant for public housing stock to the society.

But it was only early this year that the the housing board started to build on the plot.

The current market price of an apartment in the society, with a saleable area of 1,345 sq ft, is estimated to be upward of Rs 2.5 crore. However, MHADA will make them available for less than half this price.

“We were recently informed by MHADA that as per their revised rules, a person owning a house anywhere in Maharashtra under any government quota will not be eligible for a MHADA house. When we had earlier submitted names of our 84 original members, only those owning a house in Mumbai were ineligible,” said an IAS official who is also a member of the society.

According to MHADA vice-president Satish Gavai, at last count, 54 of the original members had submitted their documents, and been declared eligible. He added that several of the remaining members may not satisfy the revised criteria. “If the others do not submit their documents, then the new applicants could be considered but that call will have to be taken by the state government,” Gavai said.

The housing body usually receives at least a hundred applications for every home that it releases in its annual lottery. However, MHADA rules allow the state government to use its discretion for preferential allotment of land and homes meant for public housing.

The list of members of Maitri Cooperative Society includes private secretaries and personal assistants from the office of the chief minister, deputy chief minister and some other ministries. It also has bureaucrats and officials from departments such as housing, registration and stamps, revenue, the central civil aviation ministry and MHADA itself — all departments that were, at some point or the other, involved in sanctioning the project.

MHADA had earlier this year approved a request from the society to increase the size of the homes from the originally proposed carpet area of 861 sq ft to 1,076 sq ft. With the floor space index (FSI) increasing from 2 to 2.7 due to change in civic norms, the total saleable area of the apartments has gone up proportionally.

Official documents from 2010 show that the housing board had estimated the sale price to be as low as Rs 2,888 per sq ft. The existing rates in Kalina, which is in close proximity to the commercial business district of Bandra Kurla Complex, are between Rs 16,000 and Rs 20,000 per sq ft.

“We haven’t decided the prices of the apartments yet. However, I have categorically said that MHADA will recover the cost as per our pricing policy, no more, no less. Since these are higher-income group houses, we will also recover our 35 percent premium,” Gavai said.

Over the last several years, the state government has directed the housing board to hand over a huge stock of public housing to societies of legislators from the state and central governments, mediapersons, bureaucrats and gazetted officers. Around the same time that the Maitri society was allotted a vacant plot in August 2009, a ready-to-move in residential complex was handed over to Rajyog society, comprising over 200 Maharashtra MLAs and MLCs. No new allotments have been made since, after it was found that several of the legislators had grabbed public housing despite owning a house in Mumbai.

HOPING FOR A HOME

Officials who have applied for a house in Maitri, in addition to the original list of 84 members:

Kiran Unavekar, IRS
Rajesh Agrawal, IAS
Rajender Singh, IPS
A M Kulkarni, IPS
Vineet Agarwal, IPS
Dhananjay Kamalakar, IPS
Rajvardhan Sinha, IPS
Sanjay Kumar, IPS
Vikas Kharge, IAS
Prashant Nikam, IRAS
Malini Vijay Shankar, IAS
Vandana Rajesh Krishna, IAS
Radhika Rastogi, IAS
Sudhir Kumar Goel, IAS
Amitabh Rajan, IAS
Sharda Prasad Yadav, IAS
Chiranjeev Prasad, IAS
Vijay Waghmare, IAS
Rajesh Kamble, IPS