Soon, DDA to start in-situ redevelopment in 6 slums

After Kathputli Colony, the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) plans to begin in-situ redevelopment of six more slums in the capital on a public-private partnership (PPP) basis.

The land-owning agency will soon (after the model code of conduct is lifted) float tenders to hire a consultants to prepare Detailed Project Reports, said a DDA official. The six slums are the JJ clusters in Rohini’s sectors 18 and 19, Dilshad Garden, Kirti Nagar and Shalimar Bagh, and Kusumpur Pahadi in Vasant Vihar.

DDA will simultaneously start a survey to identify the beneficiaries in these slums as per the Delhi Slum and JJ Rehabilitation and Relocation Policy, 2015, as prepared by the Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board. According to officials, the process to hire construction firms will start by the end of this year.

“We will soon float tenders to appoint consultants to assess the feasibility of the project in terms of financial and existing planning norms. The consultant will also prepare the tender documents for all the projects,” said a DDA official aware of the development.

Of the 675 slums in Delhi, 499 are on central government land, including DDA-owned land.

In these in-situ slum development projects, DDA plans to hire a private developer who will construct multi-storeyed housing facility for slum dwellers (or beneficiaries identified through survey) along with a commercial component on the land where the slum exists. The commercial component will be used by the developer to recover the total cost of the project. The land will be leased to the developer, the period of which will be decided by DDA.

After the construction work at the Kathputli Colony redevelopment project, which is the first rehabilitation project on PPP basis, started last year, DDA decided to replicate the model in most cases. The land-owning agency had passed a policy in this regard last year.

“We have identified 23 clusters to be taken up for rehabilitation. In the second phase, we will take up 11 slum clusters. The idea is to do redevelopment largely on PPP basis. But we have to see the feasibility of the project. There could be areas where the existing land would not be sufficient to accommodate all the people. In such cases, we will have to adopt a different strategy,” said the official.

The land-owning agency will also rope in an agency to identify the beneficiaries in each project. For this, it will hire a firm which has expertise in the field. “We are planning to hire the same agency which does the survey for DUSIB. We have initiated the process to hire the firm,” said the official.

Dunu Roy, director at Hazards Centre, which provides professional services to community and labour organizations, says that the DDA should assess the success of PPP-based rehabilitation of slums. “The Kathputli project has just started. We don’t know whether it is going to be a success. The DDA should first review its experience with all the rehabilitation projects it has undertaken till now,” he said.