MHADA attempts successful lottery system on FB Live; says it's a move to increase transparency

Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (MHADA) on Friday attained a major milestone by going digital after it held its lottery live on Facebook.

"Our lottery was broadcast live. People across the world – from big cities to the remotest village could watch it. One need not come all the way to Mumbai to witness the lottery," said Subhash Lakhe, chief office, Mumbai Board, MHADA.

During the four hour live lottery, the authority had 20,000 live viewers from 30 countries. And its reach in those four hours was more than 1.30 lakh. A senior official from MHADA said, “MHADA vice president  Milind Mahiskar told us to do the Facebook Live. We realised the importance of how such exercises restores faith in homebuyers. The transparency level we achieved via this one small move is tremendous.”  

Till a decade ago, details of when and where MHADA lotteries would take place remained unknown.

In 2007, MHADA introduced a digital lottery system to bring in more transparency. The result was applications for homes went into lakhs, as opposed to earlier.   

MHADA lotteries started being held in auditoriums. The authority even involved potential homebuyers and even during lottery announcements, the applicants were called on stage, shown the procedure and few were made part of the committee overseeing the lottery.