In DDA’s mixed-income housing, the fence that divides ‘us’ and ‘them’

The eight blocks of Dwarka Greens’ beige-and-white apartments have the same façade. Other than the floor area, the houses in the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) housing at Dwarka’s Sector 14, Pocket 5, have everything in common, including access to gig workers and domestic help. A gulmohar in full bloom redeems the standard-issue design: buildings with stilt parking, the blocks identified simply by the letters A to H. 

But somewhere between F and G towers stands a partially erected fence with rust-coloured chain-link wire mesh gate. The panels of the gate now lie flat on the ground. G and H towers house residents from Delhi’s economically weaker section (EWS), with an annual family income less than ₹10 lakh. Those who own houses in A to F towers are from the low- and middle-income groups (LIG and MIG), with one- and two-bedroom houses, respectively. The fence was meant to restrict access to common areas, say residents. 

Dwarka Greens is one of the several mixed-income housing colonies that DDA offered under its Diwali Special Housing Scheme 2023. It placed EWS, LIG, and MIG flats within a single pocket and shared infrastructure: parking, parks, and open spaces. The brochure promised a 1.2-acre central community park accessible to all residents within a minute’s walk. “Watch your kids play near your home,” it had said. It said nothing about a fence, some residents say, while others, including the DDA, insist that the fence was always part of the plan. 

In May 2024, just a month before home owners were to take possession of the houses, 9 allottees from the EWS group filed a civil suit against DDA in a trial court. They argued that the scheme had been marketed as a single integrated estate, that the brochure mentioned no fencing, and that restricting access to the central park and community centre violated what they had been promised.

The courts finally ruled in January 2026, that this was a matter to be decided by Real Estate Regulatory Authority (RERA), which regulates the housing sector. Now, residents say that RERA has asked DDA to mediate, and bring both groups to an understanding. The gate panels, partially installed, have been on the ground inside the society, ever since.

Meanwhile, a Residents Welfare Association (RWA) has been formed by the LIG-HIG houses for their blocks. The EWS allottees argue that DDA collected a common corpus fund for the maintenance of the housing pocket. 

What was meant to be an integrated neighbourhood, no longer is. The colony has become a site of wider anxieties over class, belonging, and who gets to claim the common space.

DDA has launched around 52 housing schemes and provided over a million homes since 1967, according to its housing website. While earlier schemes largely offered Janta, LIG, MIG, and high-income group (HIG) flats in separate pockets and phases, newer projects have sought to accommodate multiple income groups within the same pocket. 

Its original mandate, under the Delhi Development Act, 1957, was not primarily housing; it was an ancillary activity tied to planning and development. The Master Plan of Delhi 2021, implemented from 2007, mandates that 15% of floor area ratio (built-up area) for a project be reserved for housing for EWS or lower income.

Between blocks 

Dwarka Greens has 1,008 homes for those who fall into the EWS category, and 316 each for MIG and LIG apartments, with 3 entry and exit gates. One gate is on the G and H blocks’ side.

Ritu, a resident of G block, was sold on Dwarka Greens after she saw the site plan. The open area promised enough space for her children to play and for her family to exercise. Two years on, her children play just below their block of houses, and she needs to stay with them to monitor the movement of cars and bikes. She rarely uses the central park.

“There are no common events, no evening get-togethers where women, who are homemakers, meet and talk,” she says. “I have never spoken to a woman from the other blocks. Hum apna apna rehte hain, wo apna rehte hain,” (We keep to ourselves; they keep to themselves).

Issues are discussed in separate WhatsApp groups, one for A to F and another for G and H. Ritu says that the issue arose from fencing. She calls it a “partition”. “We objected to it, but it has led to unsaid rules in the society. If a partition comes up and there is only one gate for all EWS residents, it will cordon off the central park. If there is an emergency situation, like a fire, there will be problems,” she says. 

It started two months before the residents had taken possession of their flats. On April 26, 2024, DDA officials and labourers arrived at the complex. Ranjeet Singh, one of the first EWS allottees, recalls that he first got to know of the fence-installation plan between the blocks then. When residents asked for a written order authorising the fencing work, the labourers said they had none and were acting on oral instructions, say those from G and H blocks.

Residents began taking photographs with time stamps, to document the erection of the fence. DDA officials returned on April 29, May 1, and May 5. On May 5, metal fasteners were installed. On May 9, sections of the mesh fence went up, with police presence on site. Residents slept in shifts through those nights, Singh recalls, in case workers returned under the cover of night to quickly finish the work. The resistance held long enough to secure the lower court’s stay order on May 9. 

Within months of possession, EWS residents found that the children from A to F blocks didn’t mix with their children. “There was also a quarrel over who could hoist the flag on Independence Day in Central Park. We were told that the park is theirs, so we can’t hoist the flag there,” says Singh. 

Maps and plans 

The LIG-MIG residents worry that the EWS residents will usurp their outdoor covered parking, which, they say blocks G and H are not entitled to. They were also to have access to the basement parking, but that is still not operational, two years after handover. In the car park stand some luxury cars, Range Rovers, Bentleys, and BMWs. EWS houses get the stilt parking under their flats.

Some LIG-MIG residents say EWS allottees, being more in number, will dominate the common RWA. Others say they have more rights because of the difference in maintenance charges, given their bigger floor area. A few even drew analogies to general and air-conditioned coaches on a train, and say that “mixing both” is difficult. One compared the situation to grains mixed with dust. Some asked how a family earning under ₹10 lakh a year could afford a car. 

LIG-MIG residents say they are asking only for what they were sold. Rajesh, a B-block resident, says the fence had always been part of the map he saw. The map, Rajesh claims, he saw before booking the flat was from the layout plan of the 413th screening committee of DDA held on June 15, 2023. 

The minutes of this meeting were only uploaded in September 2024, months after the possession of the flats. It is the same map which DDA cited to assert in the courts that there is no “unauthorized alteration.” It submitted that the provision for fencing and gates was part of the layout plan approved by the committee, which predates the allotment process. MIG and LIG allottees back this, calling the fencing “a security measure” promised to them at the time of booking.

The document carries the notation “wall/fence & gate” at four points on the plan. Two fences with gates flank the facility block, controlling passage from the society’s main gates to the EWS towers. The remaining two run along the either end of those blocks, facing the central park area.

However, this does not appear in the site plan of Pocket 5 in the brochure of DDA’s own housing scheme documents, including a 2024 DDA Dwarka Housing Scheme brochure, which again put some flats from this housing colony up for sale. 

A senior DDA official, offered a different framing for the fencing in 2024: it was a “temporary arrangement to regulate and restrict parking” until an RWA was formed, after which rules around timings and the use of the facility centre and green area would be collectively decided. The facility centre itself has not yet opened. 

Another fence, undisputed

A few kilometres away, at DDA’s Golf View Condos in Sector 19B, a tall black chain-link fence mounted on a low concrete wall encloses two apartment towers behind a separate entrance. The complex overlooks a golf course that DDA proudly claims is “the longest public golf course in India”. It is close to the Yashobhoomi Convention Centre, and was sold in the same 2023 Diwali scheme. Penthouses here were priced at approximately ₹5 crore, Super HIG units at ₹2.5 crore.

Behind the fence are EWS towers, L and M. On the other side lies 14-storey A to K towers with playgrounds, sports courts, cycling and walking track, and 3.7 acres of green space. The fence went up without a recorded dispute.

Sonam Kumari, an EWS allottee in one of the two blocks, navigates the compound daily. When her son’s school bus enters the compound through the main gate, she does not walk out through her block’s exit. She cuts through a narrow passage through the fence leading to a community centre that is still not opened, steps over pipes laid out on the ground, to reach him.

A senior DDA official, when asked about the fencing at Golf View Condos, says, “Fences are there because it is a different category of flat.” The pocket has about 50% occupancy at present, with the handover of nearly 90% of units ongoing. 

There are 364 flats of over 700 in Tower M, housing the EWS allottees, which were offered under a Community Service Personnel scheme. Only existing allottees of penthouses, Super HIG, and HIG units could purchase these, for their service staff, through an e-auction. Subsidised pricing was removed for these transactions. According to a circular in March 2025, up to 325 of these units have been sold.

Mixed-income pockets have also been offered in Loknayakpuram and Narela under recent schemes. 

DDA has not responded to a list of questions sent by The Hindu, including some asking about the reasoning behind fencing in these societies and measures to discourage conflict in composite housing colonies.

One pocket, one RWA

A resident of B block in Dwarka Greens pointed to DDA’s Om and Kautilya Apartments, offered in the late 1990s, as a precedent. It has had two RWAs for decades: one for the LIG flats in Om Apartments and one for the MIG residents of Kautilya Apartments, both registered independently. The question of whether that model was ever regularised, or simply allowed to persist, has not been answered by DDA.

The RWA situation at Dwarka Greens has its own contradictions. In October 2025, DDA had written to all allottees urging them to form a single RWA for the entire pocket, citing the lapse of the first year’s upfront maintenance fund and completion of 80% allotments. But LIG-MIG residents obtained a certificate of registration, signed by the DDA Vice-Chairperson on December 29, 2025, for a registered agency covering Blocks A to F, excluding G and H, the EWS towers. However, residents say there was no election, but someone was name president. 

After EWS residents objected to the partial registration, DDA clarified in an April 2026 circular that only one RWA could be recognised under a single housing pocket, as per its Management and Disposal of Housing Estate Regulations, 1968. DDA is yet to respond to why the certificate had been issued in the first place without verifying coverage of all allottees. 

A.K. Jain, former Commissioner of Planning at DDA, says, “The housing management rules make it clear that a housing scheme will have a composite housing society for the whole area. It cannot be subdivided.” On the fencing, he adds, “This is not legal. Whatever facilities DDA provides are for everyone.”

The aspirations 

Dwarka has changed considerably since DDA began developing it as the capital’s largest planned sub-city in the 1990s. The Delhi Metro, proximity to the international airport, inauguration of the 16-lane Dwarka Expressway, and the upcoming Urban Extension Road II have repositioned the area as a sought-after residential address. Sectors that were once peripheral have attracted buyers from middle- and upper-income groups looking for planned neighbourhoods.

In what was DDA’s first venture of luxury housing with Dwarka 19B’s Golf View Condos, complaints of residents have emerged about substandard construction, including rusted iron fittings and seepage, just a few months into handing over of flats. For residents of Golf View Condos, the process of forming an RWA has not started. 

As residents navigate water issues, the lack of functional fire equipment, and lift breakdowns, the lack of an RWA has not pressed them enough to resolve the differences with the society’s residents in the composite housing society. While posters for property sales and banners of real-estate brokers hang on the balconies, some have already converted their house into property dealership offices. 

Urban Planner Mukta Naik, Fellow, Sustainable Futures Collaborative, a group of professionals focussing on environmentally and socially sustainable futures, questions the role of a public authority in imitating a private developer model. “DDA is not just a real estate developer. It is a public authority, and therefore the facilities it creates should be accessible and inclusive by nature. It has to be more accountable to public needs,” she says. Exclusion, she adds, has “become the aspiration of the middle classes”.