While most of its departments suffered huge financial losses during the Covid times, the virus had helped the Rajasthan Housing Board to regain its revenue to a great extent.
From a little over Rs 100 crore in 2018-19, the housing board has earned a whopping Rs 2,327.90 crore in 2021-22 mostly by selling over 16,000 residential units and close to 3,000 shops across the state. All these residential units were more than 12-15 years old.
“In mid-2019, there was a time when government was planning to close down this department. With no revenue generating, we had to use our savings to pay the salary of our employees. However, from there, we decided to give a last chance and implemented a few steps that helped us to become self-dependent again,” Pawan Arora, housing commissioner, told .
Officials claimed, in June 2019, there were around 20,000 residential units of housing board those were unsold for almost 15 years. All the previous governments constructed residential complexes one by one without making any efforts to sell them and generate revenue. The housing board started e-auctions on every Wednesday.
“Instead of appreciating the price, we decided to depreciate the price of these residential units and started putting them on auction. We decided to conduct the auction completely digitised and started uploading data and photos related to these units on our e-auction website and started conducting auctions on every Wednesday. This worked wonder and during the Covid times we have sold 1,010 homes within 35 days and then 1,213 units in just 12 days. World Book of Records in London had recognised this effort during Covid 19,” added Arora.
The housing board has also demarcated a few residential units as ‘premium’ and started selling those properties at a premium price.
