‘Revised Master Plan will encourage breaking of law’

‘Revised Master Plan will encourage breaking of law’

Staff Reporter

BANGALORE: Participants of a panel discussion on the Revised Master Plan – 2015 for Bangalore and the Karnataka Town and Country Planning (Regularisation of Unauthorised Development or Constructions) Rules 2007 on Wednesday, demanded that the State Government should delete the clause that provides for change in land use from the rules.

The new rules would only encourage more people to become law-breakers. They would also change the basic structure of a designated area following change in land use, the participants felt.

Chairman of the Karnataka Legislative Council B.K. Chandrashekar said that he was totally against the regularisation rules. “The rules are a clear violation of the elementary principle of jurisprudence. Section 14 (A) of the Karnataka Town Country Planning Act 2004 facilitating change in land use should be deleted from the rules, otherwise the whole city will be in a mess,” he said.
Identify violations

Demanding that the civic authorities identify and punish the engineers and other officials who allowed the violations at the construction stage, Prof. Chandrashekar said: “There is no clause in the rules to punish the officials with whose connivance people violated the rules. Even now, the Government can identify these officials and slap a penalty on them.”

He said the operative principle of the rules should be that any violations that are used for commercial gains by the owner should not be legalised. “If the owner has let out his basement for running a wine shop or if he has built two extra floors and rented them out, there is no reason why such violations should be regularised,” he explained.