PUDA Auction - 23/06/2007
Ref.No. : QRLD/2007-08:
S. Prakash Singh Badal Ji,
Hon. Chief Minister Punjab
CM Punjab Residence
House 45 Sector 2,
Chandigarh
23 June 2007
Dear Badal Sahib,
PUDA auction is proof of the collapse of the Punjab property market
Your government has presided over the most precipitous collapse in property values ever in peacetime Punjab. Yesterday’s PUDA auction at Ludhiana is proof (attached).
Long gone are the days when real estate activity was peripheral to the Punjab economy. Today this is a key engine of any progressive economy.
The Congress party had correctly predicted that an incoming Akali government would be regressive for the property market, but none of us had expected your government to do so much damage so soon.
Business, especially real estate, runs on confidence. As long as there is a reasonable expectation of some value enhancement, the real estate market remains buoyant. Sometimes the momentum develops into a boom – something that the last government proudly achieved.
Yet real estate market confidence is rarely sufficiently robust to override negative governmental influences. That is exactly what you achieved by withdrawing the pollution NOCs, without any effort to engage the developers whatsoever.
Today we have the tragic situation where rural land transactions have almost completely abated, urban transactions have fallen considerably and flats on the peripheries of Chandigarh that were earlier being sold off-plan at Rs. 35 lakhs each, no find no takers at Rs. 22 lakhs.
Thousands of transactions of peri-urban agricultural land have failed to complete and are either in the courts or about to reach the courts, not to mention inviting the prying eyes of the land mafia. The only gainers appear to be the lawyers, the police and possibly meddling politicians.
You have in the process dashed the hopes of tens of thousands of farmers in Punjab who had hoped to dispose of a small portion of their landholding to clear their considerable accumulated debts.
Surely you do not want the Punjab landscape to be littered with incomplete real estate projects?
I accept that it is undesirable that housing becomes unaffordable for the common man or the burgeoning middle classes. Equally, it is unacceptable that major real estate developers have started viewing with cynicism opportunities in Punjab.
I hope your government can finally accept that whatever your reservations may have been about the previous government’s sanction of major real estate projects, in the wider public interest it is better to support these projects to completion without any further impediment.
Rest assured that I am not connected with any estate development project in Punjab, and have no interest whatsoever other than the good of the people of Punjab.
Kind regards
Yours sincerely
Jasbir Singh Khangura, MLA
Halqa Qila Raipur
c. Concerned Persons
