CIDCO offers Palm Beach Road flats to VIPs at less than half the market rate

NAVI MUMBAI: Legislators, judges and bureaucrats from Maharashtra may soon be able to purchase luxurious apartments along Navi Mumbai’s Palm Beach Road for less than half the market rate, courtesy CIDCO’s ‘Maha Nivas’ housing scheme.

Designed by renowned architect Hafeez Contractor, the scheme comprises 350 apartments. These are slated to come up at plot number 20, sector 15A on Palm Beach Road, opposite the NMMC headquarters in CBD Belapur.

The apartments with carpet areas of 1270 sqft and 1800 sqft are priced at ₹2.45 crore and ₹3.47 crore respectively, or ₹19,500 per sqft. The market price of apartments in the area is ₹30,000-60,000 per sqft, said real estate sources.

CIDCO has started a demand registration scheme for the project, and applicants are required to pay ₹1 lakh to qualify for a lottery draw to select successful alottees. Those eligible for the scheme include lawmakers elected after January 2020, sitting judges of the High Court and Supreme Court and government officers currently serving in Maharashtra.

“The demand to accommodate the housing needs of these special categories had come from the government and we have received a good response to the scheme so far,” said CIDCO Joint Managing Director (JMD) Kailash Shinde.

In March 2022, a committee led by the then legislative council chairman Ramraje Nimbalkar had instructed CIDCO to frame a policy and construct houses for VIPs to be allotted on lottery basis. In June 2022, the authority approved a plan for constructing 875 apartments under the scheme, but the 2 BHK and 2.5 BHK flats were dropped from the plan due to cost escalation and demand issues, said an official.

“We have already received 270 applications so far. By the time the scheme closes on November 12, we expect the figure to be much higher than the number of flats available,” noted Shinde.

Vasant Bhadra, president of the Builders Association of Navi Mumbai, welcomed the scheme.

“This is an excellent offer. Construction is underway on two plots adjacent to the one selected by CIDCO, but the price of apartments in these plots is upwards of ₹30,000 per sqft, whereas the CIDCO rate far lesser.”

But many real estate developers and observers are also upset with CIDCO’s offer.

Manohar Shroff, senior vice president of MCHI Navi Mumbai, said that a 1,000 sqft apartment in the NRI complex adjacent to the plot being developed by CIDCO was recently sold for ₹4 crore, or at ₹40,000 per sqft. Other buyers are willing to pay ₹50,000-60,000 per sqft for apartments in the area, he noted.

“Developers have been shelling out huge sums in tenders for the limited plots here, which has increased their costs as well as the price of flats. They have been demanding bungalow plots behind high-rise complexes in the area, but these demands have not been met. This is grossly unfair to developers,” said Shroff.

“We will not take this injustice lying down,” he noted, adding that developers would go to court if the scheme was not withdrawn by CIDCO.

But Kailash Shinde, JMD of CIDCO, defended the scheme.

“CIDCO is not a private, profit-making body but a government agency that has to act as a buffer. It is our responsibility to regulate the market price, and our pricing is based on land cost, construction cost, amenities offered and so on,” said Shinde.

“The EWS flats that we offer cost at least ₹10 lakh less than the market price. It is CIDCO’s policy not to exploit the people. We are in fact getting queries for a further price reduction in the current scheme,” added Shinde.