Fourth Floor on HSVP plots – A backdoor entry

October 23, 2023
Devinder Dhingra

Satyam (The Truth)

The fourth-floor policy on HSVP and other sector plots in Haryana has a stay on it, as of now. The report has been submitted by the competent parties to the Chief Minister Office for a decision and the decision is awaited.

There are different views on allowing the fourth floor – obviously residents suffering because of it in terms of infrastructure or otherwise are against it.

Before we form any opinion on it, we need to first find out how this fourth-floor policy came into existence. It was surely a back door entry.

The FAR in HSVP sectors was 145% earlier with ten percent compounding allowed post-completion for the mid-category plots like 6 marla, 8 marla and 10 marla. With stilt parking approval it was changed to 198% FAR, the extra purchasable at the time of getting building plan approval.

198% obviously means 66% per floor since three floors were allowed for residential purposes.

The whole mess started with keeping stairs and then the Lift out of the FAR of higher floors.

It is a simple math that if FAR is 198% and the ground coverage allowed is 66%, 198% cannot be achieved in three floors if stairs and lift is out of the FAR calculations.

On top of it, there was a condition that those going with new construction have to mandatorily buy the full FAR, i.e., 198%. Obviously, most of the people who paid for 198% wanted 198% in their construction. So, they started allowing some construction on the fourth floor so that the paid FAR can be achieved.

In a country like ours, if something starts like this, it has its percussions. The fourth-floor entry slowly started becoming an illegal hub and people started constructing the whole floor. To stop this, the authorities decided to go for 264% FAR, allowing the fourth floor legally to make sure that the respective departments like HSVP earns revenue out of it.

BUT they made the same mistake again. Since the stairs and lift was still out of the FAR calculation, it is again a simple math that 264% cannot be achieved in four floors. Therefore, to resolve it the one thing they did was to allow some construction on the stilt floor so that the paid FAR could actually work out and then they shifted to allowing 75% coverage on the ground for the mid-category plots.

It is obvious that if they still don’t rectify this problem, it would keep continuing like this.

Before I suggest some solution, we need to also look at the realities of infrastructure that was obviously designed for the original 145 + 10% FAR. Let us study Gurugram since it is the only hot city in the whole Haryana where the fourth-floor provides enough commercial value.

As per the latest planning done by the authorities and as was published in the newspaper recently, the population in Gurugram is expected to grow to about 55 Lacs by 2040. There are above 100 sectors in the city and if we analyze it closely and assume 75000 people living in each sector on average in its full capacity, about 1 crore people can be accommodated in the city easily.

And interestingly, the assumed average of 75000 population per sector can be achieved even with a three-floor policy if we consider 14 persons per plotted building on average and also consider the high-rise buildings that are there in many sectors in the city.

Shivam (The Solution)

The decision on allowing the fourth-floor rests with the government. However, whatever decision is taken and apart from the committee recommendations,

they need to also ensure that the ambiguities are resolved once for all and the above-stated mistakes are not repeated to avoid any further problems in the policy.

For this,

1. The authorities need to ensure that the allowed FAR gets finished in the allowed floors itself. For example, if three floors are allowed and the maximum coverage on the ground floor is 75%, the allowed FAR should be 210% (keeping lift and stairs out) and not 225%.
2. There should be no condition of mandatory purchasing the full FAR for new constructions. For example, if someone wants to construct only 190% out of the allowed 210% in the above case, they should be allowed to purchase only 190% FAR.
3. Any planning should take care of the availability of proper lighting and air passage in each plot, and the required infrastructure should be in place before the policy kicks-in. In other words, when thinking vertically, think of the horizontal open space as well.

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