Home for mill workers, dabbawallas to be part of Maharashtra's affordable housing push, says Eknath Shinde

MHADA plans to build 8 lakh houses in the next five years, according to deputy chief minister Eknath Shinde

The Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority MHADA will build around 8 lakh affordable houses over the next five years, deputy chief minister Eknath Shinde has said.

These houses will also include housing for textile mill workers, dabbawallas (workers in the lunchbox ferrying service in Mumbai) and police personnel, the minister said after MHADA's Konkan board lottery in Thane on February 5,

At the lottery, 2,147 houses and 117 plots were allotted, for which MHADA received around 31,000 applications, reflecting increased "trust" in the authority's homes, Shinde,  who holds the housing and urban development portfolios, said.

“Earlier, there were complaints from people about the quality of construction in MHADA's homes but that is not the case now," Shinde said, adding another Konkan board lottery is expected later in the year.

Cluster redevelopment of various housing and slum areas would give a further fillip to the government's housing-for-all policy, as well as developing social infrastructure, he said.

MHADA, the nodal agency for affordable housing in the state, is building "Asia's largest cluster redevelopment project" in Thane, which is being constructed across phases, the minister said.

MHADA officials say they plan to release around 30,000 homes a year through its regional boards in Mumbai, Pune, Konkan, Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar (Aurangabad), Nashik, Nagpur and Amravati.  The houses will be sold through a lottery.

Of these, around 5,000 units will be sold in Mumbai a year. Mumbai held a lottery in October and another lottery is expected to be notified later this year, officials said.