Koramangala demolitions shatter BMP’s trade-off dreams

Koramangala demolitions shatter BMP’s trade-off dreams
New Indian Express

BANGALORE: In the ongoing demolition drive in Koramangala, the Bangalore Mahanagara Palike’s (BMP) innovative Transfer of Development Rights (TDR) scheme for acquring land for civic works has taken a beating.

The government announced TDR as compensation for owners of properties acquired by the BMP, offering development rights in lieu of monetary compensation.

Under the scheme, a building owner who concedes 100 sq ft to the BMP for a public road project, gets rights to violate floor area ratio rules by 150 sq ft.

In other words, the BMP gets to pay no compensation, and the land owner gets rights which she may use, or trade with violators.

Violators who buy such development right certificates (DRCs) would be exempted from the BMP axe.

The BMP’s demolitions in Koramangala has forced the civic body to demolish the DRC market.

When the deviations are corrected by the bulldozer, there won’t be any violator left to buy a DRC. It will dampen the BMP plans to extend demolitions to the rest of the city.

However, BMP commissioner K Jothiramalingam believes that the demolitions would only work in favour of TDR.

‘‘The demolitions only prove that the violations will not be tolerated by the civic body and one of the ways to avoid the axe is to buy DRCs,’’ he said.

But, till now, the civic body has not issued a DRC to anybody. Though the BMP had issued acquisition notices to over 300 owners on three road widening projects, only three had shown interest and no DRC was issued.

As many as 85 City roads are proposed for widening and a proper managing of land acquisition in these cases using TDR would save the civic body crores of rupees while providing an exit to the owners of property with bylaw violations.