Although Delhi is the hub of NCR, and all development in the NCR regions is owing to their proximity with Delhi, nonetheless there is very little real estate residential and commercial development that has taken place within Delhi. There are no condominium residential (world class) complexes or grade A commercial office building in Delhi; with exceptions of only a few. There is certainly huge potential. In order to get life to a large-scale real estate development and construction in Delhi, the land pooling policy in back; and this time Delhi Development Authority (DDA), stated to be “with the objective to regularize land pooling and streamline the process of developing physical and social infrastructure on the ‘urbanizable areas’ “issued the Land Pooling Regulations, 2018 (Regulations) on October 24, 2018.

To start with, the Regulations permits ‘Developer Entities’ and, or ‘Consortium’ which are eligible groups of landowners, or entities representing a group of landowners, to pool one or more land parcels aggregating to a minimum of 2 hectares and subsequently undertake the development, be it in terms of residential or commercial societies, of the resulting pooled land basis certain stipulated terms and conditions. The essential terms include inter alia the eligibility criteria, submission of plans, licensing and approvals and also to ensure the development of roads, utilities, schools and other social infrastructure to effectuate the smart-city principles.

The Regulations allows land parcels of any size to be bought under the pooling, provided they fall in the notified areas; and they also landowners with any size of land to register and express their interest to participate in the pooling. The land has to be free from all encumbrances and the landowner should have valid and lawful ownership and physical possession of the land proposed for pooling. The Regulations prescribe that a “sector” will be considered eligible when (a) a minimum of 70% of the Development Area in the sector has been pooled; (b) such land pooled land parcels are contiguous; and (c) the entire pooled is bounded on at least one side by a 30m road.

The key guidelines under the Regulations, inter-alia, requires that each landowner should surrender land proportionately for city level services or city level infrastructure in a sector. DDA and the service providing agencies are expected to develop city level physical infrastructure, recreational and public/semi-public (PSP) facilities on minimum 40% of the pooled land on payment of EDC charges on the total pooled land. Further, the remaining 60% land is required to be utilized for the development of residential (53%) (including neighborhood level facilities), commercial (5%) and public/semi-public facilities (2%) as per sector/ zonal and master plans. However, that too is subject to mandatory buffer zones near heritage sites, environmentally sensitive sites, high tension lines etc. and height restrictions prescribed by Airports Authority of India.

The Land Policy is proposed to be implemented simultaneously in the entire urbanizable areas of the urban extension and if required, roll out of the Land Policy may be phased depending upon the availability of resources and action plan for the provision of infrastructure and services by the concerned Service Providing Agencies.

The Regulation states that the entire process will be operated through an online Single Window System established by DDA, specifically for this purpose and that DDA to phase the application process through the announcement of “Application Window” from time to time. Such Application Window to be opened for inviting applications for a fixed duration of time, providing detailed information on the process to be followed.