It was on February 1, 2011, that President Pratibha Patil first expressed desire to settle down, post-retirement, in bungalows 38 and 26 A, “which are contiguously located within the defence cantonment area on the Bombay-Pune road”. The letter by her secretary Christy Fernandez, to then Union home secretary G K Pillai, with a copy to then defence secretary Pradeep Kumar, said: “The aforementioned buildings, used jointly, would measure up to a spatial area normally available in a Type VIII accommodation.”