Two affordable housing schemes in the UDCPR, and only one of them takes a quarter of your land

The short answer: 14.3 buys the land, 14.4 buys nothing. Both regulations produce affordable housing and both give extra FSI to do it, but the consideration is completely different, and choosing between them is a land economics question rather than a compliance one.

The Affordable Housing Scheme: a land transaction dressed as an FSI concession#

Chapter 14, Regulation 14.3, UDCPR as updated 30 January 2025^* is permissible only on land inside Municipal Corporation limits, and only where five site conditions hold at once.

Maximum permissible FSI, including the basic 1.00, is 3.00 on the gross plot area, including the mandatory layout recreational open space and amenity space. It is used in a 1:3 proportion between the Affordable Housing Component and the Free Sale Housing Component, on one quarter and three quarters of the land respectively, as two separate independently buildable pockets. The explanation is explicit: the 3.00 is calculated separately on each of those two land shares.

An affordable housing unit is a self-contained dwelling of 27.88 sq m carpet area, or 160 sq ft (25 sq m) where construction under the Rental Housing or Affordable Housing Scheme had already commenced.

The release schedule is what enforces it. FSI does not arrive at once.

A developer gets one third of the free sale FSI at the start. The remaining two thirds arrives only as the affordable buildings go up and change hands. That is the same mechanism as the proportionate OC rule inside a township, applied earlier in the sequence and to FSI rather than to occupancy.

Three further obligations sit alongside:

• Commercial in the affordable component. Up to 15 percent of the affordable component's built up area may be shops or commercial use as the ULB directs, and that commercial built up area is also handed over to the ULB free of cost.
• Amenity space, developed. The developer must build the amenity space out for prescribed users such as school, playground, garden, health care, multipurpose hall or auditorium, with at least 50 percent kept for open users, before seeking the Occupancy Certificate for the free sale component. Failing that, the land goes to the Planning Authority free of cost. No TDR compensation is admissible for developing those amenities. And the handover must complete within one month of applying for the free sale OC, or the OC is withheld.
• Community facilities. A welfare hall and balwadi at 30.0 sq m for every 200 residential units or part, and a society office at 30.0 sq m for every 500 units or part. These are part of the affordable component, are not counted towards the 3.00 FSI, and go free of cost to the ULB.

Off-site infrastructure charges are 5 percent of the ASR land rate for the year of the Commencement Certificate, subject to a minimum of Rs 2,000 per sq m, on built up area over and above the normally permissible FSI, paid to the ULB.

There is one concession running the other way: where genuine hardship and site conditions justify it, the Authority may relax marginal open spaces, though never below a clear 6.0 m, and no premium is charged for that relaxation on the affordable component.

PMAY: potential without premium#

Chapter 14, Regulation 14.4, UDCPR as updated 30 January 2025 works on an entirely different principle. It does not create a two pocket scheme and it does not take land. It removes the price of FSI a plot already has.

Chapter 14, Regulation 14.4.1, For Development Plan Area^# permits EWS and LIG housing under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana in any developable zone, undertaken by Government, an authorised institution, the owner or a private developer. The FSI condition is the operative one:

The permissible FSI is the maximum building potential of the plot under Regulation 6.1 or 6.3, subject to a maximum of 2.5, and that is treated as the allowable basic FSI. No premium FSI or TDR is required to be loaded to reach it. Where the plot's own potential exceeds 2.5, the part above 2.5 must still be taken as premium FSI or TDR or both.

The Industrial Zone concession is worth isolating. Regulation 4.8.1 is what permits residential use in an Industrial Zone at all, and it ordinarily carries a price. Under PMAY, the amenity space still has to be left, but no premium is charged for allowing the residential use.

What PMAY asks in return is not land but discipline:

• All tenements must be constructed for EWS or LIG, using the latest technology.
• Carpet area must not exceed what the State Government prescribes for EWS and LIG from time to time.
• Amalgamation of two or more tenements is not permissible under any circumstances.
• Only 10 percent of the basic FSI under Regulation 6.1 or 6.3 may be used for commercial purposes.
• The Commissioner or Chief Officer must verify the feasibility of basic infrastructure, electricity, water supply and sewerage, before granting permission.
• The proponent lays roads, water lines, drainage, street lighting and a waste water recycling plant at his own cost, including running water and drainage lines up to the nearest existing lines laid by the Planning Authority. The regulation says it plainly: in no case shall the burden of providing infrastructure lie with the Authority.

Chapter 14, Regulation 14.4.2, For Regional Plan Area extends PMAY to Regional Plan areas, and it is the only place in either regulation where a distance test appears.

In the Mumbai Metropolitan Regional Plan, PMAY is permissible across the whole urbanisable zone (U-1, U-2 or Urbanisable) with the developable zone FSI, and in other zones only within the distances above, at the No Development Zone FSI of 1.0.

Choosing between them#

What the register can and cannot show#

Iqbal runs three active projects in Thane and wanted to know how much affordable stock is actually being registered under these schemes.

MahaRERA does not carry a scheme flag. A registration does not say "Affordable Housing Scheme" or "PMAY", and it does not publish carpet areas, so the 27.88 sq m unit and the EWS ceiling are both invisible in the filing. The register also does not publish FSI in a form that can be audited against a plot: the permissible FSI field divided by land area produces implausible values on a meaningful share of filings, largely because phases register separately against parcels that do not line up with the sanctioned layout.

What the register does show, free, is the shape of each registration: land area, buildings and floors, total and sold units where filed, the promoter's extension history with the reasons the promoter gave, and any complaints or litigation with case numbers. For a scheme whose FSI is released against construction milestones, the filed construction progress by building is the closest public proxy for whether those milestones are being met.

Names and numbers in this story are illustrative.

Frequently confused with#

• Inclusive housing: 20 percent for EWS and LIG
• The EWS and LIG incentive FSI, and its conditions
• Integrated Township Projects
• Where the FSI goes in a restricted zone

Where the filings come in#

Scheme approval, FSI release stages and the handover to the ULB all sit with the Planning Authority and the local body.

What is public is the registration: every project at reragenie.com carries the filed land area, the buildings and their floors, the sanctioned and sold units where filed, the construction progress by building against the RERA activity checklist, the promoter's extension history with stated reasons, and any complaints or litigation.

ReraGenie's project analysis, Rs 2,999 for one project, reads the full filing and the documents behind it. The area consolidated report covers a whole micro-market at Rs 2,999 for the first project and Rs 1,999 per additional one.

Source: Unified Development Control and Promotion Regulations for Maharashtra, UDCPR as updated 30 January 2025. Sanctioned under the Maharashtra Regional and Town Planning Act, 1966.