MHADA to scrutinise applications before carrying out the lottery

The Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (MHADA) housing scheme has provided houses to several people across the state. One such group is the mill workers, who had surrendered the mill's land for the construction of the houses. While the group was unhappy about the housing authority's way of allotment of houses, MHADA’s recent announcement came as a relief for the mill workers who had applied for a house in MHADA’s housing scheme. 

Till now, the authority would first announce the lottery and then scrutinise the application which resulted in a lot of chaos and several people whose name popped up in the lottery would also have to suffer due to the confusion.  

However, this year MHADA declared that they would scrutinise the applications and later announce the lottery winners’ names.

Apparently, 1.48 lakh mill workers had applied for the housing scheme and accordingly, lottery for 12,000 houses had been issued. However, there were mistakes in many forms and due to which, those applicants had to re-fill the forms. After which, there were a lot of extra applications which were filled. So now, if these applicants get allotted two houses then they have to submit one of the houses to MHADA.

However, several mill workers complained that despite members of the same family getting two houses, they did not submit one house. After which, the mill workers demanded that the scrutiny of applications must be concluded first and the lottery must be issued later. But the demand was declined by MHADA as well the government.  

Thus, the mill workers approached the court who ordered the formation of a monitoring committee to solve the issue of the mill workers’ houses. Despite the order being enforced in July 2017, the MHADA officials did not follow the regulations. So, to ensure that the order is followed properly, the committee had sternly commanded that the decision about the same should be made immediately.

On Monday, during MHADA’s meeting with the committee, MHADA vice-president Milind Mhaiskar stated that they had already taken the decision that they would examine the applications first and later declare the lottery winners.

According to the decision, applications for workers from Bombay Dyeing Textiles, Bombay Dyeing Spring Mills and Srinivas Mill will be scrutinised.