More farcical moves in the offing

Worry not, illegal layouts may be regularised
The Times of India

Bangalore: Owners of properties in "unauthorised" private layouts may get a reprieve. The state government plans to regularise them by levying a hefty penalty. The proposal is before the cabinet.

After streamlining land conversions and property registrations, the government wants to regularise over 400 illegal layouts in Karnataka. This will entitle them to clear property documents.

The proposal is the fallout of the April 23 government order banning registration of properties located on agricultural lands without conversion approval. The GO aims at cracking down on land encroachments and illegal layouts but it had not viewed two important aspects — the guidelines for selling old buildings sans alienation plan which the revenue department was asked to work on; future of existing illegal layouts, which was entrusted to the urban development department to come out with a possible solution.

Sources told the Sunday Times of India that the urban development department has come up with a draft to regularise illegal layouts with a cut off date, levying a hefty penalty. The draft also suggests dealing with violations in the layouts and the conditions to be laid down before regularising the properties.

"Majority of the layouts are developed with houses and cannot be brought down at this stage. They can be regularised with a hefty penalty and cleared from the black list. The draft also talks about the parameters for calculating the penalty," sources explained.

In Bangalore, there are 108 illegal layouts identified by the BDA which are in the green belt, developed sans approval from authorities and with land-use violations. According to the Karnataka Town and Country Planning Act, 50 per cent of the land in a layout is meant for residential use; 10 per cent for civic amenity sites; 15 per cent for parks and 25 per cent for roads. But the rule is hardly followed.

Taking a cue from the GO, the urban development department, in May had come up with fresh orders to streamline layout development. It had instructed the authorities not to release the layout plan until the open spaces and civic amenity sites are relinquished to the local planning authority.

On similar lines, the present and the previous governments had approved a Bill proposing mass regularisation of illegal and violated buildings in Karnataka.

The Bill, approved by the state legislature twice, was sent back from the governor seeking clarifications. One-time regularisation was mooted after collecting a hefty penalty. The Bill, which had pinned the maximum limit of violations at 50 per cent had different penalties for residential and non-residential buildings.

However, the governor had disapproved the scheme which according to him ‘‘brings down the morale of the law abiding citizens.’’