With a view to enhance quality of life of the citizens and ensure social inclusion, boosting economic and environmental impact, the Himachal government is giving prominence for developing smart integrated townships with futuristic planning apart from modernizing and rejuvenating the existing mid-sized towns.
The housing demand has been constantly increasing due to rapid expansion of urban areas and keeping this in mind, the government is ensuring systematic planning and development of housing colonies in the State. The government is working with a vision not only to cater to the housing need of the people but also to ensure sustainable urban development.
Himachal Pradesh has a hilly topography, where land availability for construction of houses is a major problem. Moreover, the land in the central areas of the existing cities has already exhausted, existing infrastructure is not enough to support the additional population and the demand of housing with associated infrastructure is increasing. The migration of populations into cities is evident across geographies and does not seem to be slowing. To overcome this challenge, the government has adopted the concept of developing qualitative and quantitative 'integrated townships'.
These townships are being developed nearby the existing towns like Shimla, Solan, Kasauli Mandi, Hamirpur and Dharamshala and in developing these projects it is being ensured that these cater not only to the people of the state but outsiders and NRI's as well. The emphasis is being laid on mobility and connecting new townships with the existing ones.
The State government is implementing the housing and development projects through Himachal Pradesh Housing and Urban Development Authority (HIMUDA). The housing and development schemes include land development scheme, a city or town or village development scheme, an industrial area development scheme, tourism scheme and infrastructural scheme.
The HIMUDA has developed 73 housing colonies at various places and so far 17229 houses/flats/plots have been constructed. The work on the construction of 146 more flats and development of 181 plots is under progress at Shimla, Nahan, Dharamshala and Kullu. Four new housing colonies at Sheel, Dharampur, Trilokpur and Moginanand comprising of 301 plots and 400 flats and a commercial complex in Shimla is also under progress.
206535 square meter of land has been purchased from private owners while a chunk of 116334 Sqm. government land has already been carved out for setting up of an integrated township at Jathiadevi, near Shimla to ease congestion in the State capital. All urban facilities like modern transport, community centre, bus stand, amusement centre, hospitals, parks, educational institutes and other such facilities will be created for the convenience of the people there. This project will be executed with the assistance of experts from Singapore, for which the interim agreement has already been signed.
HIMUDA has now decided to go beyond the conventional framework of development and allotment of residential and commercial properties. It is focusing on creating quality urban infrastructure including real estate components such as shopping malls, luxury hotels, software technology parks, and leisure and entertainment facility.
The efforts are being made to attract investments in the core real estate projects at a large scale. The State is following an aggressive policy for bringing investment through the public private partnership mode and to ensure completion of the projects in a fixed timeframe.
The Town and Country Planning department of the State has also eased the norms to facilitate the developers and Himachal Pradesh is the first state in the country to provide online permissions. Similarly, a mobile app has also been launched to trap all the applications at one place.