BDA to crack down on illegal layouts

BDA to crack down on illegal layouts
Asks Banks To Get Tough
The Times of India

Bangalore: Guess who’s building a home in an unauthorised layout? Just about everyone. From government employees to City Municipal Council (CMC) members to ex-mayors, they are all in the violations game.

Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) officials say there are some 109 ‘unauthorised’ layouts in the city (the BDA website lists some 104 of them). Now, fed up of telling people not to buy sites in projects without its approval, the BDA has asked banks not to sanction loans for such projects. It has also written to the Stamps and Registration Department asking the Inspector General of Registration and Commissioner of Stamps to ensure that no property is registered without the all-important BDA approval.

The IGR, BDA sources told the Times of India, has agreed to do so but wants a detailed discussion with the BDA first. But will such bans work, especially when lawmakers themselves blithely ignore the BDA’s warnings? The BDA’s list of violators includes everyone — from cooperative societies formed by employees of government agencies (including the state law department, the revenue department and the central excise department), to an excity mayor, a member of the Raja Rajeshwarinagar CMC, as well as a co-operative house building society formed by employees of a well-known nationalised bank!

BDA officials admit this is a tough situation. “Every square inch is worth lot of money nowadays,’’ they agree. The BDA, in the past, has had some success in reclaiming its own land. Between 1999 and December 2004, it recovered 175 acres. BDA commissioner M.N. Vidyashankar says that 5.5 acres reclaimed in HSR Layout is now worth Rs 45 crore.

He says the BDA has also issued notices to all on the ‘unauthorised’ list. Quite a few projects have come up in the ‘green belt’ of the city’s 1995 Comprehensive Development Plan (CDP). In some cases, civic amenity sites (meant for parks and so on) have been converted into plots. By approaching banks and the stamps & registration department to veto such projects, he hopes developers will be forced “to approach BDA or the Bangalore Metropolitan Region Development Authority (BMRDA) to get approval for projects within the agencies’ respective jurisdictions.