1. The Estate Office was first established in 1922 as a part of the Central Public Works Department. It was then placed under a Superintending Engineer and dealt with the allotment of Government owned houses, their maintenance and the recovery of rents. The Estate office was a comparatively small organisation until outbreak of World War II. During this war, pressure on the available accommodation increased beyond all proportion due to the creation and rapid expansion of Government departments. To meet the situation, additional office and residential buildings were built and also private residences were requisitioned under the Defence of India Rules. As a result the number of residential and office buildings available for allotment in Delhi, New Delhi and Shimla underwent a large increase. This was directly reflected on the rent side also by correspondingly increase on the work of rent recoveries.
2. The all round increase in the Estate work became so heavy that it was felt that the only way to enable the Estate office to cope efficiently with the multifarious demands made upon it was to totally reorganise the then existing set up. The Estate Office was accordingly ‘separated’ from CPWD towards the end of October, 1944 and was established as an independent Organisation under a whole time Estate Officer directly under the administrative control of the then Ministry of Works and Housing and Supply.
3. The work relating to the provisions of office and residential accommodation in Calcutta and Mumbai was also transferred from CPWD to the Estate Office at the same time. The small organisations were also set up in these offices to cater the needs of the Central Government Offices and staff located there. In addition at other regional stations viz. Shimla, Chennai, Nagpur, Faridabad, Ghaziabad and Chandigarh Branch offices of Directorate of Estates were set up to cater the need for estate functions existed but where the work load was not adequate enough to set up a separate office for the purpose, these functions were kept under the charge of respective CPWD offices. In some cases economy instructions were the reasons for not opening a separate Estate office. Under the charge of CPWD, on behalf of Directorate of Estates, are the Offices at Bangalore, Indore, Hyderabad, Shillong, Agartala, Imphal, Kohima, Cochin, Kanpur, Lucknow, Allahabad, Rajkot , Jaipur, Mysore , Mysore , Chennai, Dehradun and Srinagar etc.
4. Since the setting up of the above offices, the organisation was growing and the present form was established in the Headquarters at New Delhi. The present objectives of the Organisation are as under :-
i. Administration of Government Estate (Residential/office accommodation) under the control of Ministry of Urban Affairs and Employment at New Delhi and 34 Regional Stations .
ii. Administration of Requisitioning and Acquisition of Immovable Property Act, 1952.
iii. Allotment of accommodation in Vigyan Bhavan
iv. Control administration of Holiday Home at Grand Hotel, Shimla and other touring Government Hostels viz. Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Calcutta, Kenya Kumari, Mysore, Amarkantak etc.
v. Administration of markets in Government colonies in Delhi, Faridabad, Ghaziabad, Nagpur and Mumbai.
