This year’s form submission for Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority’s (Mhada) affordable homes is low, with only around a lakh forms being submitted for 867 homes in Mumbai and approximately 40,000 forms for 1,726 homes in Mira Road.
In all, 1,38,860 forms with deposit has been submitted to the Mhada. Last year, over 1.4 lakh forms were submitted only for homes within Mumbai limits.
“May 23 was the last day for filling applications online, while Thursday was the last day for submission of these forms for lottery draw. The statistics available show that around a lakh forms along with the money deposit have been submitted at various branches of Axis Bank across the state for houses in Mumbai. Roughly 40,000 forms have been submitted for tenements in Mira Road,” Vaishali Sandan Singh, chief public relations officer, Mhada said.
The low form submissions this year can be attributed to the confusion caused after the website had stopped working on May 3. “Every year, forms are out in April and lottery is conducted in May. However, this year, there was a lot of confusion on when the forms were coming out. Also, during the month of May, several families do not stay at their homes in the city; they either go for a holiday to their hometown or on a vacation to some holiday destination,” said Fatima Khan, an applicant.
The lottery draw for Mumbai and Konkan Board’s affordable housing is scheduled to take place on May 31.
Interestingly, in the year 2009, the situation was such that Mhada officials had almost run out of forms and had to get
more application forms printed. In that year, Mhada had received a record 4,34,215 applications for 3,863 homes.
In 2010, it received 3,28,043 forms for 3,449 tenements. Last year was the first time that Mhada changed the application system from paper |forms to online applications; this drastically brought down the total number of applications to 1,40,289 for 4,034 affordable homes.