The Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority (CMDA) has taken a step towards regularisation of unauthorised plots registered prior to July 1, 2007.
At a meeting on Tuesday, CMDA cleared a proposal to regularise unauthorised plots in the Chennai metropolitan area (CMA), subject to conditions.
This step to regularise unauthorised plots follows the State government’s recent decision to condone unauthorised buildings constructed before July 1, 2007, for a fee.
The new proposal is likely to be a stepping stone for obtaining housing loans for construction of houses on many vacant plots in the CMA, officials said.
After a notification by the government, any fresh applications for planning permission to construct houses on unauthorised plots registered before July 1, 2007, would also be accepted on fulfilment of the conditions.
The plot, in order to be regularised, should be abutting a road with a minimum width of 4.8 metres. The road should have also been declared a public road by the authorities concerned and should be satisfying development regulations pertaining to minimum plot extent, plot frontage and land-use classification. The owner of the plot should agree to pay Open Space Reserve charges based on the guideline value at the time of regularisation.
According to sources in the CMDA, the proposal to regularise such unauthorised plots has been made to help a large number of people who had purchased plots without adequate knowledge of development regulations.
A large number of applications for planning permission received from such people were being rejected in the CMA now, said an official.
The earlier guidelines under section 113-C of the Tamil Nadu Town and Country Planning Act, 1971 offered only a “limited solution to the problem of violation.” The new proposal is likely to cover issues pertaining to subdivision of plots that gained momentum after the Tamil Nadu Urban Land (Ceiling and Regulation) Act came into force in 1975.
The momentum of unauthorised subdivision and registration of plots continued to be sustained even after the Act was repealed in June 1999. Unauthorised layout developers had been selling these plots as agricultural land, evading the provisions of the Act.
Lack of awareness on development regulations among CMA residents, profiteering motive of layout developers and delay in approval of layouts has added to the growth of such unauthorised layouts.
According to CMDA officials, the unauthorised layouts are scattered spatially across the CMA, with limited civic amenities. In many of these unauthorised layouts, purchase of plots, for a primary purpose of speculation, had resulted in security problems for existing households that were fewer in number on the outskirts.
