New Delhi: Former Union ministers have been served notice by the Directorate of Estates (DoE) under the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) to vacate their official accommodation in Delhi’s Lutyens’ by 10 July as requests for accommodation pour in from newly appointed ministers, ThePrint has learned.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its allies have dropped thirty-seven former ministers from Narendra Modi’s Union Council of Ministers in the newly formed National Democratic Alliance government.
Many of them, including Smriti Irani, Arjun Munda, R.K Singh, Niranjan Jyoti, Sanjeev Balyan, and Rajeev Chandrashekhar, lost in the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections. Others, such as Anurag Thakur, Narayan Rane, and Parshottam Rupala, won but did not get a ministerial berth this time. Some, such as Meenakshi Lekhi, did not get a ticket to contest the polls as the BJP replaced them with new faces.
All Union ministers and ministers of state (MoS) are entitled to a ‘Type VIII’ bungalow in Delhi’s Lutyens’. Former ministers have to vacate such an accommodation when they lose their ministerial berth, according to the DoE rules.
“According to the rules, former ministers and MPs, who have lost their ministerial berths, have to vacate the accommodation within one month after the formation of the new government. On June 19, notices were served to all former ministers to vacate the property,” a senior official in the MoHUA told ThePrint.
“We will issue a show cause notice if they fail to vacate the bungalow by 10 July, and then the next step is to serve them an eviction notice. But most former ministers vacate the bungalow within a month,” the MoHUA official added.
While the DoE looks to allocate bungalows to 37 new ministers, senior officials said they have started getting requests for accommodation from some of them, with a few specifying their preferred location.
“We have received close to 8-10 requests from ministers for allotment of bungalows,” said the MoHUA official.
This time, the DoE is not facing any problem in the allotment of bungalows to ministers as the strength of the new council is 71, the same as earlier.
Some Union ministers such as Chirag Paswan, who got the food processing portfolio, already have an official accommodation from when they were an MP in the 17th Lok Sabha.
DoE officials said that the first preference will be the ministers who do not have accommodation in Delhi so far.
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New MPs to be allotted accommodation as well
Apart from Union ministers, notices have been issued to former MPs to vacate their official accommodation by 10 July.
The 18th Lok Sabha has 280 first-time MPs, who will also require accommodation. They include former Haryana Chief Minister (CM) Manohar Lal Khattar, now the power and housing and urban affairs minister, and former Madhya Pradesh CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan, given the agriculture and rural development portfolio.
While the DoE is responsible for providing accommodation to Union ministers, the MPs are allotted houses from the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha accommodation pool, according to their seniority. Till the MPs get such accommodation, the central government provides them with transit accommodation in the state bhawans.
With the Lok Sabha session going on, the DoE has made arrangements for the stay of MPs in their respective state bhawans.
“In case there is no space in the state bhawans, we are providing accommodation to the MPs at Western Court and other places. The government will pay for their accommodation till the allotment of an accommodation,” said another MOHUA official.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
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