Signature View Apartments residents & Delhi development body fail to break deadlock

NEW DELHI: Two months after the lieutenant governor ordered Delhi Development
Authority (DDA) to redevelop the ‘structurally damaged’ Signature View
Apartments in Mukherjee Nagar, the residents and the authority are yet to reach a consensus on
the process for vacating the flats.
DDA officials have given three options – redevelopment, buyback and swapping of flats – to the
residents, who claim none of these is feasible. On Monday, a group of residents said they had
met four DDA members and requested them to raise the matter in the next board meeting.
“Given that the building is in a dangerous state, we are asking residents to shift. In the
meantime, three offers have been given – one, DDA can buy back flats, second, it will redevelop
the complex and pay the rentals to the affected residents at market rate, and third, a swap
wherein they can be moved to DDA flats available in other parts of the city,” a DDA official said.

The official said the redevelopment of the housing complex will be done as per the current
norms, which means DDA will utilise more space and create more flats.
The society’s RWA, however, said DDA was initially paying only the original cost of flats, i.e.,
about Rs 75 lakh and upwards, and it was after their intervention that the authority agreed to
pay 10.6% simple interest as per guidelines of the Real Estate (Regulation and Development)
Act, 2016.
“But RERA guidelines do not apply in Delhi and after including this interest amount too, the
overall cost will be much less than the flats’ market rate. Further, for swapping, DDA is giving the
option to shift to flats in Jasola, Dwarka or Narela. But why would a person living in central Delhi
prefer to shift to such far-flung places? Even the rent offered by DDA — Rs 42,000 per month —
is less than that of flats in neighbouring gated societies,” said RWA president Amarendra Jha.
“On the one hand, DDA was imposing compounding charges at 15% on the flat’s original cost
when the owners failed to pay the full amount on time and on the other, it expects us to return or
sell the flats at meagre prices,” added Jha.
Residents said DDA plans to increase the number of flats from 336 to 516 and recover the cost
by selling these apartments.

“It had earlier developed the apartments as per the 2001 Master Plan and wanted to reconstruct
them as per MPD 2021. With the addition of so many flats, services will suffer. So DDA should
either improve facilities and provide additional space to each flat owner or should not make
additional houses,” said a resident.
A DDA official said the “best” offer has been made to the residents and the authority would bear
the cost of construction. “A committee that also includes residents has been constituted to
address their issues,” he said.
The housing complex was built between 2007 and 2010 and allotted to residents in 2011-2012.
But in just a few years, the buildings became structurally unsafe. According to residents,
construction-related issues surfaced in 2012-13, forcing them to pursue the authority. DDA later
conducted a study through IIT-Delhi in 2021-22, which took 184 samples.
“The study’s recommendation was to ‘vacate and dismantle’ the buildings immediately. But we
were provided access to it only after we filed three RTIs with DDA,” Jha claimed.