In a culmination of the pro-active steps taken by Vice-Chairman Kona Sasidhar on the Layout Regularisation Scheme (LRS) to clear the applications in a time-bound manner, Visakhapatnam Urban Development Authority on Thursday gave approval letters to about 650 applicants. Though 1,400 letters are ready for distribution, the rest cannot be given as the applicants have to pay part of the penal fee.
Assuring applicants that the thrust on LRS approvals would continue, he said surveyors were drafted from the Revenue Department and 15 AutoCAD operators hired and six jeeps given to VUDA officials to make field inspections. Location and field sketches were provided to the applicants free of cost. Stating that the volume of work was heavy he said still VUDA was committed to people, transparent and asked the applicants not to encourage corruption. VUDA would continue to give approval letters every week at the rate of 1000 or so.
Mr. Sasidhar later told reporters that in 25 days 2,600 layouts were inspected and 1,400 approved. While in two years 4,500 applications were finalised including 2,000 rejections, in a month's time 1,400 were finalised. One major area was obtaining a certificate from the Revenue Department on the nature of the land. To overcome it, with the co-operation of the Joint Collector, a pro forma with all details was prepared and sent to the Revenue officials where they had to only mark whether it was government land or not.
The Vice-Chairman said work on approval of the remaining 8,000 applications would continue as per the target set.
It was a difficult work as preparing the drawings would take much longer after the completion of inspections.
The first priority would be to accord approval to clear applications and those with approach through government land or objectionable land would be taken up later.
Chief Urban Planner K.Ananda Babu, Chief Engineer Viswanadha Rao and Estate Officer Jagadish were present.
