Tenements provided under rental housing scheme in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) will not be given on ownership basis, the Maharashtra government told the Legislative Assembly today.

Under the scheme, houses will be leased out on rent for a period of five years and they will not be given on ownership basis, the Chief Minister, Mr Prithviraj Chavan, said.

Intervening in a debate on the issue raised through a calling attention notice in the Lower House, he admitted the scheme, launched three years ago, has not evinced satisfactory response despite several incentives to realty developers.

“The developer will be given 4 FSI (floor space index) of which 1 FSI will be given back to the government after construction. Three FSI will be sellable component. By now, 3.5 lakh houses should have been ready. But only construction work is going on at seven places at this moment,” Mr Chavan said.

(FSI is the ratio of the total floor area of buildings on a certain location to the size of the land).

“MMRDA is a planning authority and will not be responsible for recovering rent and getting the houses vacated after five years. It is impractical to ask the tenants to leave the houses after five years. At present, deliberations are on as to how it can be done and how will be responsible for it,” the Chief Minister said.

A committee comprising Urban Development Department, MMRDA and MHADA officials has been appointed to discuss the issue. Ninety per cent of the rent goes to the civic body (BMC). There is a thought of making the civic body responsible for running the scheme, he said.

The panel will also suggest measures of how to make this low-cost housing scheme more viable, Mr Chavan said.

He said MMRDA (Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority) will not be responsible for construction of houses.

It will be done by private developers and the State-run MHADA (Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority) can be part of it, the Chief Minister added.

Earlier, the Minister of State for Urban Development, Mr Bhaskar Jadhav, said 50 locations had been identified for the project out of which permission for 18 had been received.

Mr Jadhav said the demand for increasing the area of houses from the present 160 sq ft each will be considered.

The government has announced a scheme for 500,000 rental homes in five years to overcome a housing shortage in the financial capital.