Chandigarh, June 20: The Chandigarh Housing Board (CHB) is poised to take a final decision on its long-pending self-financing housing scheme in Sector 53, which has remained stalled for years due to administrative and financial hurdles. The CHB’s Board of Directors is expected to deliberate on the scheme’s future at an upcoming meeting, officials said.
The proposal, which had generated considerable public interest, was put on hold by the UT Administration in 2023. A demand survey conducted before the suspension received nearly 6,300 applications—1,000 of them for Economically Weaker Section (EWS) units, while the remaining were for High-Income Group (HIG) and Middle-Income Group (MIG) flats. Notably, around 70 percent of the non-EWS applications were for HIG units, indicating strong demand for higher-end housing.
However, with collector rates in the city revised upward since the survey, the CHB is reconsidering its pricing strategy. “We are no longer inclined to offer flats at the previously proposed rates. The Board of Directors will now decide whether to revise, relaunch, or scrap the scheme altogether,” a senior CHB official said. Meanwhile, the board has initiated refunds of the registration amounts collected during the earlier demand survey.
For the 2023 survey, applicants deposited ₹10,000 each for HIG and MIG units and ₹5,000 for EWS units, which would have been adjusted against the earnest money deposit had the scheme gone forward. According to CHB rules, withdrawal at a later stage would have resulted in forfeiture of the deposit.
The proposed layout of the scheme includes 192 HIG units, 100 MIG flats, and 80 EWS flats. Environmental clearance for the project has already been renewed, signaling the CHB’s intent to keep future planning options open.
UT Chief Secretary Rajeev Verma, who also chairs the CHB, had earlier ordered a fresh demand survey to reassess the feasibility of the scheme. A similar attempt to revive the project was made in 2018, but with only 178 applications received for 492 available units, it was shelved.
In August 2023, the then UT Administrator Banwarilal Purohit ordered a halt to the General Housing Scheme, citing lack of necessity. That decision led to the cancellation of ₹200 crore in construction tenders for 372 flats that had been floated earlier that month.
Pricing in the revived 2023 scheme had been fixed at ₹1.65 crore for a three-bedroom unit, ₹1.40 crore for a two-bedroom MIG unit, and ₹55 lakh for an EWS flat—figures notably lower than those proposed during the 2018 version of the scheme. Back then, prices ranged from ₹1.8 crore to ₹95 lakh, depending on the category.
The last time the CHB successfully launched a housing scheme was in 2016, which offered 200 two-bedroom flats in Sector 51. The Sector 53 proposal now awaits a decision that could shape the city’s urban housing landscape in the years ahead.
