MUMBAI: Nearly 16 years after the Adarsh Housing Society scam surfaced, the Maharashtra government has decided to lift the ban on allotting government land to cooperative housing societies by introducing a fresh policy that replaces the lottery system with direct auctions.
Under the proposed policy, government land will be auctioned to housing societies through a technical and financial bidding process, with the society offering the highest bid being selected. It will now be placed before chief minister Devendra Fadnavis for final approval. The controversy eventually led to the resignation of then chief minister Ashok Chavan, who was accused of facilitating the allotment of flats to close relatives in return for favours. The court, however, allowed the state government to frame a fresh policy based on transparency and fairness but nothing materialised then. The new policy will also end the practice of transferring government land on an ownership basis. To ensure representation of different sections of society, the government has proposed category-wise reservations.
The base price will be fixed at 2.5% of the land’s market value in Mumbai city and its suburbs, and at 5% elsewhere in the state. The state government had previously allotted land to cooperative housing societies under government resolutions issued on July 9, 1999, and May 25, 2007. However, the allotment was halted following the Adarsh Housing Society scam in 2010, which rocked the then Congress-NCP government. Bawankule said the revised policy has been drafted in view of a petition in the high court filed by the Sanjay Gandhi Cooperative Housing Society in Kolhapur, as well as observations made by the Supreme Court on November 25, 2024. Instead, plots will be granted on a 30-year lease, after which they will become eligible for conversion to Occupancy Class-I status, effectively making them freehold. General category societies will get 40% of the plots, while 15% will be reserved for housing societies of state government, local body and government undertaking employees.
In March 2014, the Bombay High Court also struck down government schemes for allotting houses to needy persons under the chief minister’s discretionary quota, terming them “illegal, unfair and irrational”. The draft policy was approved by state revenue minister Chandrashekhar Bawankule on Wednesday.
