Delhi Development Authority postpones housing scheme draw to unspecified date

After facing last-minute technical hiccups on Sunday, the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) has postponed the draw of the lots for its flagship Housing Scheme 2014, which was scheduled to be held today (Nov 17).

The decision comes in the wake of technical problem encountered by the housing body while holding the mock trial for the scheme at its headquarters in 'Vikas Sadan' in the neational capital and no new date has been announced.

The new housing scheme offers 25,034 flats including, EWS, LIG, MIG, HIG, Janta flats and one-room apartments. The 22,627 one-bed room apartments were a major draw for the people in 2014, and DDA has received over 10 lakh applications for it.

C-DAC (Centre for Development of Advanced Computing), which had conducted the draw for the housing body's last scheme in 2010, has been roped in this time again for the event. A mock trial of the draw of DDA Housing Scheme-2014 was held on Sunday at Vikas Sadan in the presence of Hon'ble Judges and senior officers of DDA.

After the mock trial, C-DAC officials observed that mock trial had taken as long as 8-9 hours because of a large number of applicants, multiple category of flats (more than four), multiple preferences for locations (34) and multiple reservations (SC, ST, Persons with Disability, Ex-Servicemen and War Widow).

Therefore, the date of drawing lots has been postponed and will be announced soon.

"It is taking inordinately long time and the process needs more time for optimisation of data and process," DDA said in a statement on Sunday.

"Some technical experts have been called to check the process and give their opinion so that during the final draw there are no technical problems," the housing body added.

The draw was slated to be held today at the Conference Hall of the DDA headquarters at 11:30 am.

Additionally, for the first time, the housing authority would be webcasting live the entire draw on the internet with a dedicated URL for the same.

"We have created a dedicated website for the draw, and instead of directly webcasting through a YouTube channel, we later decided to create a separate window for the event altogether, where online user(s) can see the proceedings live," DDA's Director (Systems) VS Tomar had said.

Online users must visit this site directly as no link has been provided through the official DDA website, to preclude any chance of crashing of the home site.

The new scheme, which offers over 25,000 flats across various categories, ranging in price from Rs 7 lakh to Rs 1.2 crore, closed on October 15. This latest housing scheme was launched on September 1. The last date for application was initially set for October 9 before it was extended till October 15.