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— PHOTO : P.V. SIVAKUMAR

Cityscape: How many of these buildings are pucca is anybody’s guess.

The BDA stopped formation of sites in Bangalore in 1983, thereby denying an opportunity for the residents aspiring to own a site of their own. This continued till 2000. But the city was growing rapidly and the population increased multifold. Thus the demand for residential sites increased enormously. When the demand far exceeded supply there was no alternative for the common man but to buy sites which cropped up in and around Bangalore as revenue sites/unauthorised layouts. In 2005, the Government came out with a notification prohibiting registration of non-converted land. This put a brake on formation of such layouts and high-rise buildings.

There were lots of protests on the above order. In order to set things right, the Government came out with its much publicised scheme of regularisation of unauthorised land and gave a preliminary notification on May 19, 2007, under the Karnataka Amendment Act, 2007.

The salient feature of the scheme is that any person owning a piece of land/site in a layout other than those formed by BDA/CITB or layouts approved by BDA, has to pay a penalty for various violations and get the same regularised as a one-time measure whether or not such land has been converted as non-agricultural by the deputy commissioner concerned. The scheme was also applicable to buildings within the Bangalore City Corporation limits/BDA sites which had violated some of the listed provisions such as FAR, Zonal Regulations, setback etc. at different rates specified by the Government. We shall restrict our discussion to BBMP areas and residential houses/sites.

The Government fixed a penalty varying from Rs. 200 to Rs. 600 per square metre and two per cent of cost of building under part I for regularisation of non-converted land and building unlawful structure; and 10 per cent to 25 per cent of cost of land used for setback and FAR violations up to 50 per cent as enacted in the amendment Act itself.

Many people are under the impression that they are not affected by this scheme since they are living in BDA/Corporation sites, have their plans sanctioned by Corporation /BDA and have paid their taxes. But if there is a deviation in the constructed area vis-a-vis sanctioned plan and FAR exceeds permissible limits, they have to pay the penalty and get their buildings regularised. The penalties are heavy.

The Government sought objections/suggestions from people who may be affected by these notifications. Many resident welfare associations sent their representations to the Government, suggesting that the penalty be reduced.

The Government came out with its final notification effective September 14, 2007, stating that this order has been made after consideration of more than 500 objections/representations received from the public. But there is no difference between the preliminary and the final notification in respect of the penalty proposed and extent of violations except that the final notification fixes a time for the validity of the scheme. It has provided a time of three months for the persons who want to benefit from the scheme. If a person fails to pay the penalty within that period, he is liable to lose facilities such as water and electricity supply and must pay a penalty under Section 321 of the KMC Act.

The citizens are subjected to multiple penalties. The guideline booklet released by the BBMP reveals hidden penalties in addition to the above, in the form of Section 18 of KTCP Act at Rs. 20 per square metre and Section 95 of KLR Act at Rs. 13.50 per sq. mtr.

Using the examples shown by BBMP, the penalty to be paid for a 30x40 site in an unauthorised area with maximum allowable FAR and setback violations, a 30x50 site in an unauthorised layout with minimum allowable FAR and setback violations and a 40x60 site in the same area without any setback or FAR violations comes to Rs. 2.13 lakh, Rs. 1.50 lakh and Rs. 1.40 lakh respectively.

In the above examples, all kinds of possible violations, i.e., more than 25 per cent, less than 25 per cent and no violation in case of setback and FAR are considered. Maximum violations are taken in a 30x40 site only as an illustration. The actual penalty has to be calculated according to the construction made.

It is evident that owners of vacant sites will have to pay less than people who have constructed houses thereon. One should not assume that a small site owner has to pay more penalty than a large site owner.

In the above examples, the maximum violation is assumed in case of a 30x40 site and as such the penalty is more. If the same volume of violation is committed by a 60x40 site owner, the penalty will be higher.

The land use/zoning regulation violation is not included in the above computation. In such cases, the penalty would be further increased by Rs. 100 or Rs. 375 per sq. mtr. as the case may be.

The BDA, while approving any layout or forming any layout, sets aside 40 per cent of the land for CA and other amenities such as roads, parks etc. and only 60 per cent of the land acquired will be allotted as sites. We shall take this as our model.

The area of BMP before Greater Bangalore was 225 square kilometres (refer BBMP website). After the formation of Greater Bangalore, this area increased to 750 square kilometres, i.e. around 500 square kilometres of new area was taken over by BBMP. As any land coming under the jurisdiction of a Corporation loses its original character of agricultural land and is liable to taxes and revenues as applicable to non-agricultural land, this entire area of 500 sq km is subjected to the regularisation scheme. This is because CMC/village panchayats are not authorised to issue change of land use or conversion orders.

Normally, in all these unauthorised areas, less than 25 per cent of the total land is left for roads and other common amenities, and the rest is converted as sites as against BDA norms of 40 per cent towards CA and 60 per cent towards sites.

Applying the above model, about 200 sq km is set aside for amenities, leaving about 300 sq km of land to which this scheme can be applied. Taking the average of the rates proposed by the government for unauthorised layouts, i.e. Rs. 400 per sq. mtr. as applicable to 30x40 site, the penalty would be more than Rs. 12,000 crore. To this add the penalty for unlawful buildings, commercial buildings and setback and FAR violations, the corpus will easily cross Rs. 30,000 crore from the new BBMP alone.

As the scheme is applicable to old BMP and other parts of the State, there is scope for much higher revenue if every affected citizen pays up the penalty.

If any person fails to use this opportunity he is under a threat of not only losing his water and electricity connections but also his property. How far this is tenable remains to be seen. Even if it is tenable, does the Government have enough machinery and manpower to enforce the rules? Can the Government withstand the resistance from public in such cases?

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