Arkavathy allottees knock on new CM’s door

They have been waiting for seven years to take possession of the plots allotted to them but their land appears to have been squandered away thanks to illegal de-notifications

The 8,800 members of the Arkavathy Layout Allottees’ Association are hopeful that their seven-year-long wait for a BDA plot will end with the help of the new political dispensation in the State. These people were allotted plots by the BDA at Arkavathy Layout in June 2007 but have still not been given possession of their property.

Now, encouraged by media reports that Chief Minister Siddaramaiah plans to bring about major reforms in the functioning of the BDA, the association has written to him seeking his intervention is solving their knotty problem.

In a letter to Mr. Siddaramaiah on Monday, association president G. Shivaprakash said of the 8,800 allottees, nearly 5,000 have had their sites registered in their names and are paying tax for the last seven years without getting possession. The remaining have paid the full amount for the plots allotted to them but are unable to get the BDA to register the properties in their names.

The letter points to the series of alleged illegal denotifications which had reduced the land available for formation of sites. Land that had already been allotted and paid for by the allottees was also denotified by the previous government, the letter adds.

“The problem for any BDA layout is denotification of land. Once this is stopped, there will be no problem in forming any layout. The [Arkavathy] project which started with 2,750 acres in 2005 is now merely left with 750 acres for allottees,” says the letter.

Despite the association’s assertion that only 750 acres remains with the BDA for site formation, there is in fact no clarity on the matter.

1,898 acres available

An independent investigation by The Hindu shows that only 1,898 acres are available with the agency to distribute plots among the 8,800 allottees plus another 6,000 land-losers who are also supposed to be allotted plots under the land in return for land scheme. However, appearing before the Public Accounts Committee of the State Legislature on September 5 last year, BDA officials submitted that they are in possession of 1136.19 acres of the 4,000 acres that was notified in March 2004. “BDA officials are telling us that they have only 900 acres for site formation,” says Mr. Shivaprakash.

With such confusion over land availability, the allottees are hoping that the new Chief Minister will come to the rescue.

“But there is such a mess that I don’t think even he will be able to solve all the issues. We have to be realistic,” says Mr. Shivaprakash adding that the association would take a delegation to the Chief Minister soon.