The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh / Hyderabad News : ORR: developers directed to ‘gift’ 5 p.c. land to HUDA

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Wednesday, Jul 30, 2008
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad

ORR: developers directed to ‘gift’ 5 p.c. land to HUDA

T. Lalith Singh

The authority will sell it for residential/ commercial use

Another 5 per cent for EWS, LIG and MIG housing
2.5 per cent to be kept aside for social infrastructure

HYDERABAD: Gifts are usually given but not demanded and made mandatory. But that’s exactly what the new rules on development in Outer Ring Road Growth Corridor have come out with.

The recent orders make it mandatory for every developer with plans in the corridor to hand over 5 per cent of the total area to the Hyderabad Urban Development Authority/Hyderabad Airport Development Authority. Not only should this parcel of land reserved and offered free of cost but it has to be done through a gift deed!

Continuing with G.O. 288, the agency has incorporated similar regulations for the Growth Corridor along the 162 km long ORR circling the peripheries of a burgeoning city.

This bit of the land to be reserved for the HUDA/HADA is apart from 10 per cent for parks and open spaces and what is mandatory requirement for a network of roads subject to a minimum internal road width of 9 metres in the area to be developed. Also, to be kept aside is another 2.5 per cent that will go for social infrastructure such as hospitals, schools and shopping centres.

And if one wonders what the HUDA plans to develop in the site that it collects from a developer in the guise of a gift, then the answer is rather intriguing. The agency will dispose it off for either residential or commercial use!

The mandatory requirement of 5 per cent land to be handed over to the authority for development of layout has peeved the real estate industry and a developer wonders, “How can the HUDA demand and take a gift from us and subsequently sell to fill its coffers?”

Realtors agitated

What agitates the industry further is another clause is the mandatory reservation of more land in the form of 5 per cent each for EWS, LIG and MIG housing purposes. Developers argue against it on ground that they do not receive any incentives or subsidies from the government and in such a scenario why should the reservation be made.

The much awaited provisions on the corridor have come at a time when the real estate sector has been protesting the same incorporated in G.O. 288 and representations were made for their repeal.

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