Boom time sees land use violations galore

Boom time sees land use violations galore
The Times of India

• An apartment complex is coming up off Bellary Road in an area denoted ‘industrial zone’.
• Another apartment complex has come up beside a metal cutting plant in Ramamurthynagar.
• A house in Richards Town is now a ‘call centre.’
• Two residential projects are coming up beside a concrete mixing plant in Sarjapur.

Within the city and in its outskirts, this is increasingly more common. The apartment complex in the ‘industrial zone’ is being heavily promoted. So are the projects in Sarjapur.

Never mind that all of them could come under what is called ‘change-in-land use violations’.

How are such projects allowed? One reason: the booming development in the city. Demand is so high that people bought flats in the Ramamurthynagar complex though they knew about the metal cutting plant. “We believed our developer’s agent when he said the plant
would soon close down,’’ admits Amit A., a flat owner.

According to him, the area was originally a residential zone. Karnataka State Pollution Control Board corroborates this. It found that noise at the metal cutting plant peaked at 120 decibels (db) and averaged 51.4 db “in a residential area’’ where the maximum stipulated noise value is 55 db.

The area is under K. R. Puram CMC which had no right to permit a factory, especially one causing noise pollution, in a residential area. So, how was the factory —which existed before the apartment complex, allowed in the first place? No one seems to know.

Violations high: Change in land use violations are high, BDA sources admit. One estimate is that only 10-15 per cent of projects get ‘change in land use’ certification. BDA issues such certification within BCC and the CMC/ town municipal council limits.

“When issuing the certification, we check what ‘land use’ (whether residential, industrial or commercial zone) the area has been prescribed in the Comprehensive Development Plan,’’ the sources said. BDA cannot go and check each and every project to see if ‘changein-land use’ has been done. The agency depends on complaints in this regard. Once it knows of a violation, BDA can issue notices to the property owner. That is what it did in the Richards Town case.

Recently BDA announced it will issue change-in-land use certification in a month’s time in case of: change from commercial to residential, industrial to commercial and, industrial to residential zones. BDA commissioner M. N. Vidyashankar shrugs off the charge that violations will go up. “We do check before issuing permission. This move makes things more transparent.’’

A week ago, BDA unveiled its draft 2005 CDP. Critics like former Environment, Ecology and Forests Secretary, A. N. Yellappa Reddy, point out that as the plan has opened up the green belt (in the 1995 CDP), for ‘development,’ things can only get worse.