Cidco Plan Board has approved construction of affordable homes in Navi Mumbai, to be made available through lottery.

In a move that will bring relief to home buyers in Navi Mumbai, the city and industrial Development Corporation is planing to build 8,684 affordable houses in the area.

The houses will be made available to the public in the next 30 months, through a lottery system.

"The board has recently approved the construction of 7,566 tenements for Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) and Lower Income Groups (LIG). We will also construct 1,118 tenements for middle and higher income groups," Pramod Hindurao, chairman, cidco, said.

The tenements for EWS and LIG will measure 285 and 360sq ft respectively. Construction is expected to being by year end. These homes will be built at Ghansoli, Vashi, Kharghar and Taloja- Panchand.

The cost of construction has been pegged at Rs 9,51.65 crore. Similarly, at Kharghar, Cidco will construct homes for middle and higher income groups. 710 flats, measuring 611sq ft, will be built for middle income Groups (MIG). For Higher Income Groups (HIG), 408 houses will be built of 1,702 ft for HIG.
The project cost is pegged at Rs 426 crore.

Hindurao said that construction of these houses would commence in the next two months.

The lottery date, however not fixed."We are also working on the pricing of these flats. We assure buyers that these houses would be a lot less costly than those offered by builders, and will be of high quality", he said. The Cidco board has also give the agency clearance to build an additional 3,500 houses, which it plans to do in the next phase of the project.

In addition, Officials claim that they plan to build most of the houses within a 500-metre radius of the Upcoming CBD Belapur- Pendhar Metro line that Cidco is constructing. The Metro line is expected to be completed by May 2014.

The agency had launchad its last housing scheme in March 2009. the lottery for which was held in April this year. Nearly one lakh people had expressed interest in the scheme.