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In April the Union Government announced that 1,511 of Delhi's 1,731 unauthorised colonies would be regularised. Sixty-nine are excluded for being affluent. We opened the list. It is, almost entirely, the South Delhi farmhouse belt.
Author
Ashutosh Bhogra
Category
Legal
Read time
5 min read
Published
October 2026
On 7 April 2026 the Union Minister for Housing and Urban Affairs, Shri Manohar Lal, announced with Delhi's Chief Minister that 1,511 of Delhi's 1,731 unauthorised colonies will be regularised on an "as-is, where-is" basis. The Press Information Bureau put it plainly: "Absence of approved layout plans will not be a barrier to regularisation."
For the households concerned this is substantial, and the Delhi Development Authority is precise about why. Regularisation confers title documents "in respect of their properties for further sale", and establishes that banks and financial institutions "may extend credit facilities in respect of your properties." Title that can be sold. An asset a lender can be asked to look at. Applications were to open on 24 April through the MCD's SWAGAM portal.
Subtract, and 220 colonies fall outside. The grounds, as set out in the release and in DDA's scheme FAQ, are reserved or notified forests, land protected under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act 1958, Zone-O of MPD-2021, the rights of way of roads and high-tension lines, the Ridge, and land protected under any other law.
And then the last item. "Additionally, 69 affluent unauthorised colonies also fall under the exclusions."
Read that list again and the shape of it is plain. Forests. Monuments. The floodplain. The Ridge. Rights of way. Every one is a fact about the ground — something a surveyor could walk out and mark.
The sixty-nine turn on a fact about the residents.
That is not a complaint about the policy. There may be sound reasons to treat a colony of large private plots differently from a colony of thirty-square-yard houses. It is an observation about what kind of category the word is doing work as, because the consequence runs opposite to what the word suggests. Affluent, here, does not describe standing. It describes who the remedy stops short of.
DDA publishes two lists: List of Unauthorized Colonies Inhabited By Affluent Section of Society, and the list of everything else. What it does not publish, on the scheme pages, is a definition. No income threshold, no price band, no per-square-yard figure, no stated test appears there. There is a list, and being on it removes you.
It is a public PDF on DDA's own site and it takes about a minute to read. Almost nobody appears to have done it; we have not found a report that goes beyond the press conference.
The document is headed LIST OF UNAUTHORISED COLONIES INHABITED BY AFFLUENT SECTION OF SOCIETY, has three columns — serial number, registration number, name of colony — and runs to 69 entries.
It is, very nearly in its entirety, South Delhi and South West Delhi, and specifically the farmhouse and urban-village-extension belt:
Sainik Farms is serial number one. Defence Service Enclave and Sainik Farms Western Avenue follow at four and eight.
Chattarpur accounts for roughly fourteen entries — Chattarpur Extn., Chattarpur Enclave, Chatterpur Mini Farms.
Neb Sarai is a large cluster: Neb Sarai Extn., Neb Valley, Indira Enclave, and the many Freedom Fighters Enclave and Freedom Fighters Colony entries along IGNOU Road.
Saidulajab appears repeatedly — Saidulajab Extn., Paryavaran Complex, Kohinoor Enclave, Dang Complex.
The kunjs behind Vasant Kunj are there: Shanti Kunj, Bhawani Kunj, Asha Kunj, Vasant Kunj Enclave.
The Mehrauli belt runs through it — Gadaipur, Club Drive, Green Meadows at Satbari, Silver Oak Enclave at Jonapur, Harcharan Bagh at Andheria More, and several Kalka Das Marg properties held by private companies.
Mahipalpur, Rangpuri and Rajokri are also on it, Rajokri as Amaltas Avenue at Samalka, entry forty-nine.
One point of accuracy if you are counting. The second column is a registration number, and several localities appear more than once under different registrations — Freedom Fighters Enclave recurs many times with varying spellings, Chattarpur Enclave appears three times in identical words. So the list is 69 entries. The number of distinct addresses is smaller.
We should say this plainly, because "affluent colonies excluded" has been read across South Delhi as though it were a threat to any expensive address.
Greater Kailash is not on the list. Neither is Panchsheel Park, Defence Colony, Anand Niketan, Vasant Vihar or Maharani Bagh. We went through the sixty-nine entries looking for each of them.
They are absent for a straightforward reason: they are not unauthorised colonies. They are planned or long-since-regularised colonies, and PM-UDAY — the framework this sits inside, launched in October 2019 under the 2019 Regulations — does not apply to them. The April announcement operates on unauthorised colonies, and none of those six is one.
The exclusion bites on a specific and identifiable belt, and it is worth knowing which.
A household in one of the 1,511 gets a route to a conveyance deed. The stated process is a GIS survey within seven days, deficiencies rectified within fifteen, and the deed within forty-five.
A household in one of the 69 gets none of that. Its position on the day after the announcement is what it was on the day before.
That difference shows up in three places and they compound. Sale — what transfers to a buyer, and whether the document is one a purchaser's lawyer will accept without a long argument. Credit — whether a lender will look at the address at all, which is a question answered bank by bank rather than in general. And the buyer pool, which is the one most people underweight: where institutional finance is difficult, the likely buyer is someone who does not need it, and that is a materially smaller set of people.
One figure for context, stated without a verdict attached. PM-UDAY has been running since October 2019, and by 31 March 2026 it had issued approximately 40,000 conveyance deeds and authorisation slips. We do not know how many applications were made or how many properties were eligible, so we draw no rate from it.
In April 2025 the Supreme Court issued notice to the Union Housing Ministry, the Delhi government, MCD and DDA, after the Amicus Curiae, Senior Advocate Anitha Shenoy, questioned why authorities extend protection to illegal structures in affluent unauthorised colonies. The bench observed, as reported by Business Standard, that extending protection to ultra-affluent illegal colonies "fundamentally undermined urban planning and strained civic infrastructure without any accountability." That observation, as reported, was about ultra-affluent illegal colonies. Authorities were given two months to file affidavits. The colonies named in the reporting were Sainik Farms, Defence Service Enclave and Rajokri — all three of which are on DDA's list.
We found no later reporting on that particular proceeding, which tells you we have nothing to stand on rather than that nothing has happened.
A separate and more recent matter is live, and it has a deadline in it.
On 18 August 2026 the Delhi High Court — Chief Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya and Justice Tejas Karia — directed officials of the Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, the Delhi government, DDA and MCD to convene a meeting and address the issues relating to Sainik Farm. The Court said residents "cannot be kept in lurch." Reporting puts the time given to decide at two months.
That is worth reading precisely, because it is easy to over-read. The Court has not regularised anything. It has told four authorities to sit down together and reach a decision. A direction to decide is not a direction to decide in any particular way, and an outcome is not on the record until it is on the record.
What it does mean is that a question which has gone unanswered for a very long time now has a date attached to it. If you are transacting in one of these colonies, that is an argument for establishing the position as at your own date — from counsel who has read the file — rather than relying on anything written earlier, this page included.
We have written before that a Category A circle rate is a cost rather than a compliment — a classification that sounds like standing and functions as an expense.
This is the same mechanism with a sharper edge. A word that reads as praise marks the boundary of a remedy, and where that boundary falls is a matter of public record that takes a minute to look up.
Two lists. One page on a government website. Worth knowing which one an address is on before rather than after.
Sources: Press Information Bureau, Government of India, release of 7 April 2026; Delhi Development Authority PM-UDAY scheme FAQs and the published list of unauthorised colonies inhabited by the affluent section of society; Business Standard, 30 April 2025, for the Supreme Court proceedings; Bar & Bench, 18 August 2026, and The Daily Pioneer, 19 August 2026, for the Delhi High Court order. Nothing here is legal advice and nothing here is a comment on any specific property. The position on any particular address must be confirmed by counsel who has examined that property's documents.
A decision to regularise 1,511 of Delhi's 1,731 unauthorised colonies, announced on 7 April 2026 by the Union Minister for Housing and Urban Affairs, Shri Manohar Lal, with Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta. Applications were to open on 24 April 2026 through the MCD SWAGAM portal.
Not as a completed act. The Government's wording is that the colonies "will be regularised", and the release describes a per-property process — a GIS survey within seven days, deficiencies rectified within fifteen, a conveyance deed within forty-five. It is a decision moving through a queue, property by property.
Three things: a title document that can be used for onward sale, the position that a bank may lend against the property, and — per the Government's release — the ability to build or redevelop in accordance with MCD norms. DDA's exact wording on the first two is quoted in the article above.
No. Construction follows MCD norms, and DDA's own wording on vacant plots after conferment is that construction "may be allowed by the Urban Local Bodies as per norms." That is permission capable of being granted, not permission already given.
Two hundred and twenty, being 1,731 less 1,511. Every ground but the last is a characteristic of the land — forests, protected monuments, Zone-O, rights of way, the Ridge, land protected under any other law. The last is the 69 affluent unauthorised colonies. The full wording is set out in the article above.
It is a DDA classification. DDA publishes one list headed List of Unauthorized Colonies Inhabited By Affluent Section of Society and a second list of the remaining colonies. On the scheme pages no definition accompanies it. Nothing states what level of wealth, what plot size or what price puts a colony in the category. There is a list, and being on it removes the colony from the scheme.
Almost all of them lie in the south and south-west of the city, in farmhouse and urban-village country. Sainik Farms, Chattarpur, Neb Sarai and the Freedom Fighters Enclave entries on IGNOU Road, Saidulajab, Shanti Kunj and Bhawani Kunj behind Vasant Kunj, Gadaipur, Satbari and Jonapur out through Mehrauli, and then Mahipalpur, Rangpuri and Rajokri. The article above sets it out entry by entry.
No — none of the six appears anywhere in the sixty-nine entries. None of them is an unauthorised colony, so the PM-UDAY framework, and therefore this exclusion, does not reach them.
Yes — serial number one, with Defence Service Enclave and Sainik Farms Western Avenue also appearing.
It is also the subject of a live court matter. On 18 August 2026 a Delhi High Court bench of Chief Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya and Justice Tejas Karia ordered the Union Housing Ministry, the Delhi government, DDA and MCD to meet and settle the issues around Sainik Farm, saying residents "cannot be kept in lurch." The reported deadline for that decision is two months. Nothing has been regularised by that order — four authorities have been told to reach a decision, not told what it should be.
A different and earlier case, in the Supreme Court, was reported in April 2025; the colonies named there were Sainik Farms, Defence Service Enclave and Rajokri. Because the position may move, it has to be established as at your own transaction date by counsel who has read the file, not from this page.
Our view, not a government position. It depends on the lender and the specific address, and the answer is not uniform. It matters beyond your own financing because it also shapes who is able to buy the property from you later.
Our view. Because the market prices documentation. A visible, persistent price gap between an excluded colony and a comparable address whose paperwork is settled is not an inefficiency waiting to be spotted — it is the accumulated judgement of a large number of buyers who each ran the same enquiry. That does not make the property a poor purchase. It means the price is not the interesting part of the decision.
Our view. Four things: what document actually transfers to you; what proceedings touch that address, as at your own date; who your eventual buyer is likely to be and what they will need in order to buy; and what your own bank says about that specific address rather than about the area.
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