Mysore/Mysuru: The Mysuru Urban Development Authority’s (MUDA) bid to solve the growing land crunch and premium on land value by building Group Housing Projects, where there will be more than 2,000 housing clusters, is now in a limbo as the State Government is yet to give its approval. 

There is good demand for the Affordable Group Housing Scheme as thousands of people who want to own a house in Mysuru have already submitted applications when the “Demand Survey” was carried out for Group Housing Scheme.

In all, over 45,000 people have applied for the housing scheme. This apart there are over one lakh applicants for a MUDA site and people have been waiting since 20 years for a site to build a house of their own.

Best suited land

MUDA has so far not ventured into Group Housing Projects and had confined itself to plot development. There is a severe crunch of land and all the proposed new layouts including the ambitious Nalwadi Krishnaraja Wadiyar Layout, Swarna Jayanti Nagar, Shanthaveri Gopalagowda Layout, R.T. Nagar 2nd Stage and Ballahalli Layout are stuck in a quagmire. Some of these layouts have been planned in late 1990s and MUDA has still not completed land acquisition process. Though it has finished R.T. Nagar 1st Stage, it is stuck in other layouts.

For the Group Housing Scheme – aimed at promoting vertical growth as there is land shortage for horizontal growth – MUDA had prepared a plan in the year 2017 to construct 1,348 houses in the land along Ring Road in Vijayanagar 2nd Stage. This land which is locked between High Tension Road, Ring Road and Seshadripuram College was considered by MUDA as best suited for Group Housing.

Ambitious plan

The plan involved construction of a fourteen storeyed building of 1,348 houses and was estimated to cost Rs.422 crore. MUDA had reserved Rs.75 crore in its budget for 2017-18. The Project had proposed to build 120 one BHK, 1,168 two bedroom houses and 60 three bedroom houses. These houses would be categorised into luxurious, semi-luxurious and ordinary houses and would still be affordable to a common man.

After preparing the blue print, MUDA called for a demand survey, during which it received a whopping 45,000 applications and the demand is still high. Following good response, MUDA has sent a proposal to the Government along with the project blueprint and Detailed Project Report (DPR). This was in 2018 and the proposal is gathering dust in Government’s file racks.

MUDA was constituted with the main purpose of development of new layouts to ease the housing needs of people and provide better infrastructure facilities. Mysuru is witnessing tremendous development after capital city Bengaluru.

CDP too non-functional

It is attracting people from all corners of the world as the place is gifted with clean environment, historic monuments and buildings, concentration of industries, educational and employment opportunities, road and rail connectivity. Seeing the growth potential, MUDA has prepared a revised Comprehensive Development Plan (CDP) 2031 for the systematic growth of the city, boosting tourism potential also focussing on developing the city without damaging its heritage character.

But MUDA has seen limited success in distributing civic amenity sites, residential sites, commercial sites and other non- residential sites and there are more than one lakh applicants who are waiting for a MUDA plot since many years.

Some of the reasons for MUDA failing to develop new layouts are constraints in land disputes with farmers, delay in land acquisition, government approval process and competition from private land developers, house building credit cooperative societies and scarcity of land in city surroundings.

Boon to private builders

Now the situation is such that neither MUDA can develop new layouts owing to scarcity of land and the constant tussle with farmers and landowners nor it can go ahead with vertical growth by constructing affordable group housing as the Government has not yet approved the same. Also, there is no clear-cut direction from the Government in this direction.

This literal inactivity at MUDA has been a boon for private layout developers and house building credit cooperative societies who are purchasing the land from farmers at attractive prices and are selling built properties and houses to own house aspirants. Most of the private layouts have come up around the well-built MUDA layouts and these private areas have the advantage of power, water and sewage lines built by MUDA.

Just a planning authority?

MUDA has a Commissioner, Secretary, Superintending Engineer, two Executive Engineers, 13 Assistant Executive Engineer, and more than 20 Junior Engineers. It has an exclusive planning division and has the capacity of planning and executing project worth Rs. 1,000 crore. Despite this, MUDA cannot even plan, execute and implement 15 to 20 storeyed building projects, thanks to the lack of will power by Ministers, elected representatives and influential people.

With neither layout work nor Group Housing Scheme on its own land, MUDA has literally no activity and if the same situation continues, there is a danger of MUDA being reduced just to a planning authority.