If you are dreaming of owning a BDA site in the city, the upcoming Nadaprabhu Kempegowda Layout may be your last chance, but your wait may just get longer. Though Chief Minister Siddaramaiah set a deadline of March 2015 for allotting 5,000 sites in the layout, it may take another year at least for the BDA to allot sites in the layout, sources confirmed.
The BDA, that has succeeded in taking possession of only a part of the lands notified for the layout, has taken up civil works in the area. Even after six months, it hasn’t completed levelling the area. Following levelling, roads have to be laid and sites carved out. The BDA layout plan envisages a 12-km long 100-ft road through the layout. The completion of civil works to make the sites allotment ready may take at least a year, BDA officials confirmed.
However, BDA Commissioner T. Sham Bhatt said that they were preparing to call for 5,000 sites in a few months from now. “We can allot sites and complete the civil works before handing over the possession of the sites,” he reasoned, adding that the process would be sped up after the BBMP polls.
BDA had initially planned to carve out 60,879 sites. But it was able to get possession of only 1,980 acres of litigation-free land of a total of 4,814 acres notified. This will make room for only 20,000 sites, of which the first phase will have 5,000 sites.
Sites to cost dear Sites in this upcoming layout are sure to pinch pockets, as a site of 30 feet by 40 feet dimension will cost a whopping Rs. 24 lakh, the highest price for a BDA site fixed till date. The BDA attributed the high price of the sites to the skyrocketing land acquisition costs for the layout.
No survey yet of encroached land
A month after Chief Minister Siddaramaiah first announced that the government would regularise residential development on 3,699 acres of encroached BDA land, the authority is yet to initiate a survey to identify house owners on these lands.
BDA Commissioner T. Sham Bhatt told The Hindu that they had decided to outsource the survey work to a private firm. “Tenders will be called shortly for this. The encroachments cannot be regularised during the model code of conduct for BBMP polls. So we still have time and the survey may take a few months,” he said.
What may stay
Govt. likely to regularise only residential buildings, schools, colleges, hospitals and temples
What may go
* Commercial buildings on encroached lands likely to be deemed illegal post-survey
* Around 60,000 residential buildings have come up on encroached land: BDA
