Visits eight Affordable Group Housing Project sites across city

Mysore/Mysuru: With the Mysuru Urban Development Authority’s (MUDA) ambitious Affordable Group Housing Scheme in limbo for years due to various reasons and bottlenecks, new MUDA Chairman H.V. Rajeev went on an inspection-spree this morning. He visited all the sites where the Authority has planned to build houses under the Scheme.

MUDA,  after conceptualising the idea of Affordable Group Housing Scheme, came up with a project in 2012 for building 2,000 housing clusters for distribution among the poor, needy and deserving at affordable prices. But the flagship project hit several roadblocks over the years. 

The MUDA had planned to execute Group Housing projects at eight sites across the city — Dattagalli, R.T. Nagar, Vijayanagar Second Stage, Basavanahalli, Lalithadrinagar, J.P. Nagar, Hootagalli and Kergalli — all coming within the Ring  Road periphery. 

The MUDA has varying areas of land under its belt, ranging from half acre to more than four acres at these eight sites, which have been fenced. It had planned to construct eight to twelve floor buildings of House Clusters at these sites depending upon the area, with each structure to have a vehicle parking facility, a water treatment plant, a park and other civic amenities. 

MUDA had also prepared a Detailed Project Report (DPR) of the project for vertical construction of single bedroom, double bedroom and three-bed room houses.

With  Affordable Group Housing Project gaining much demand in recent days due to paucity of space with the city growing faster, the MUDA launched a ‘Demand Survey’ in 2016 when Mahesh was the MUDA Commissioner.

The Survey received tremendous response with hundreds of people lining up every day in front of MUDA Office on JLB Road for submitting their applications. Later, MUDA wrote to the Government seeking to set out guidelines for allotment of Houses to be constructed under the project. However, the project was hit by delays and other roadblocks and subsequently, the project went into limbo.

Now, the new MUDA Chairman, in a bid to give a fresh start for the much sought after Housing Project, visited all the eight sites this morning. 

Rajeev told Star of Mysore that the entire plan and project will undergo an overhaul in keeping with the latest requirements and a new blueprint and cost estimate will be prepared soon. 

Pointing out that the project will be planned and designed suitably in accordance with the area of land available at the respective sites, he said that he will give fresh push for the execution of the project, which will greatly help in easing the pressure on housing needs of the city. The cost factor, which plays a key role in the Affordable Housing Scheme, too will be taken into account while preparing the estimate, he added.

MUDA Superintending Engineer Shankar, Executive Engineers Suvarna and Prabhakar and other officials accompanied the MUDA Chairman.