CIDCO — City and Industrial Development Corporation of Maharashtra

The City and Industrial Development Corporation of Maharashtra — CIDCO — was set up in 1970 with a specific job: build a satellite twin city to relieve Mumbai's overcrowding. That project became Navi Mumbai. Fifty-plus years later, CIDCO has planned, developed and continues to run 14 nodes across Navi Mumbai and, since 2018, is doing the same job for Aurangabad's AURIC (Aurangabad Industrial City). CIDCO's housing lotteries are the single biggest supply of formally-titled affordable flats in the Mumbai satellite region.

What "CIDCO mass housing" actually means

When newspapers talk about a "CIDCO lottery", they usually mean the mass housing scheme — the periodic bulk allotment where CIDCO releases several thousand flats in one notification. The 2018 mass housing lottery received 1.18 lakh applications for 14,838 flats, an oversubscription ratio of roughly 8:1, and remains the largest single CIDCO lottery to date. The 2022 mass housing followed with about 5,700 flats across Taloja and Kharghar. Newer lotteries are being planned around the Navi Mumbai International Airport corridor and the Ulwe node, where the CIDCO 2024 notification released about 26,000 flats in phases.

Categories follow the standard EWS / LIG / MIG / HIG split. EWS flats are priced in the ₹15-25 lakh range, targeting families with annual income under ₹3 lakh. LIG goes ₹25-45 lakh. MIG and HIG in the ₹50 lakh to ₹1.2 crore band, depending on the node.

Where CIDCO flats actually get built

Location matters even more with CIDCO than with most Indian housing lotteries. The best-connected nodes — Vashi, Nerul, Belapur, Kharghar — are largely built out and rarely feature in new mass housing lotteries. New inventory typically comes up in Taloja, Panvel, Ulwe, Dronagiri and Ghansoli. Of these, Ulwe has become the fastest-appreciating location because it is the node closest to the upcoming Navi Mumbai International Airport, and Taloja has the highest current supply. Taloja flats trade at a discount because the current rail/road connectivity is thinner, and reader questions we get about "should I take the CIDCO Taloja flat" almost always come down to whether the buyer can tolerate a 90-minute commute to Mumbai until the coastal road and metro extensions land.

AURIC — the newer, quieter CIDCO project

Aurangabad's AURIC (Aurangabad Industrial City), announced under the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor, is a separate CIDCO-run project. AURIC has periodically released residential plots and industrial plots. The residential plot lottery in AURIC is much smaller than a Navi Mumbai mass housing round — a few hundred plots at a time — but demand-to-supply ratios are usually much friendlier because Aurangabad's real estate market is not oversubscribed the way Mumbai's is.

Documents that actually matter — and one specific trap

CIDCO's online application asks for PAN, Aadhaar, income proof (for EWS/LIG), and a bank account for the earnest-money refund. The specific trap that catches many first-time applicants is the domicile requirement: for the reserved category slots (SC/ST/OBC), CIDCO requires the Maharashtra domicile certificate to be issued by a Maharashtra tehsildar, not simply a state-of-birth certificate. Applicants who moved to Maharashtra as adults and registered a birth-state SC/ST certificate can be disqualified from the reserved slot but should still apply in the open category.

The other paperwork moment that goes wrong is surrender. If you win a CIDCO flat but cannot take it — because of location, layout, or a home-loan rejection — the surrender window and refund calculation are strict. CIDCO deducts an amount from the earnest money before refunding, and the deduction rises the closer you get to the possession date. Reading the surrender clauses in the allotment letter within the first week of receiving it is one of the specific pieces of practical advice we tell every first-time CIDCO applicant.

Where CIDCO fits versus MHADA

If you are looking in the Mumbai region, CIDCO and MHADA are the two big formal-title routes. MHADA's Konkan Board overlaps geographically with CIDCO's Kalyan and Panvel nodes — so an applicant with flexibility can enter both lotteries in the same year and take whichever comes first. CIDCO tends to have larger single releases (bigger absolute odds when a lottery drops) and MHADA tends to have more predictable annual cycles. For the airport-corridor thesis specifically — Ulwe, Dronagiri, Panvel — CIDCO is the primary route, since these nodes fall under CIDCO's planning jurisdiction rather than MHADA's.

Every active CIDCO scheme currently on our site is listed below with the applicable node, category-wise pricing, and application dates. Always verify the current notification on cidco.maharashtra.gov.in before paying — CIDCO does not accept applications through agents or middlemen.