The Mysuru Urban Development Authority (MUDA) is witnessing a slow but gradual shrinking of its land-bank due to encroachment to curb which it will constitute a dedicated task force.
The encroachment is significant and has considerably shrunk the swathe of land under MUDA as a result of which it is unable to roll out new infrastructure or housing projects.
MUDA Chairman H.V. Rajiv said the task force would be similar to the one in the BDA in Bengaluru and a proposal has been submitted to the government for approval. He said it will be headed by an officer of the rank of Deputy Superintendent of Police and will have a team which will have powers to evict encroachment and help reclaim the land. He said it will have complete powers to survey and reclaim the MUDA property with additional police support when required. “The encroachment is significant and by the time it comes to the notice of the engineers a full-fledged residential colony would already be in place,” said Mr. Rajiv.
Eviction and reclamation of encroached property on a large scale was fraught with difficulties as MUDA comes under political pressure to regularise them by taking a ‘humane view’, he added. Besides, if a police complaint was filed pertaining to encroachment, it does not receive priority and hence the task force is expected to be a solution.
Though the official maps indicate a specific property or land belonging to MUDA, spot inspections tend to indicate that the area has been built up over the years and demolition attempts tend to end in legal disputes that drag on for years. “We would have compensated the farmers and acquired the land but a spot inspection would reveal the presence of a layout,” say senior MUDA officials.
Updated registry
Mr. Rajiv said that apart from a dedicated taskforce the MUDA would also update its property registry.
“In the absence of a property register it is even more difficult to ascertain which is a MUDA property and which is not and hence the property register would also be updated,” he added.
Survey of properties
MUDA also relies on the property survey conducted under the Urban Property Ownership Records (UPOR) project under which more than 1.75 lakh properties have been surveyed and digitized. This helps in ascertaining the original ownership of land. But almost one-third of the properties surveyed do not have proper or verifiable documents and hence the MUDA cannot entirely depend on this.
