Yet another deadline extension for LRS

Urban local bodies struggling to process applications

The Telangana government has once again extended the last date for regularising unauthorised layouts, this time till the end of the month under the Layout Regularisation Scheme (LRS). The Municipal Administration & Urban Development department has constantly been moving the timeline forward every few months after the scheme was announced in November 2015 and even now, the various urban local bodies, GHMC included, have been struggling to clear them.

On the last count, 74,308 applications are still pending in various municipal bodies of the 1.65 lakh received, from which the government is expecting to receive up to ₹140.09 crore more. So far, 90,692 applications have been cleared, which brought in a revenue of ₹577 crore to the local bodies.

It has already been conveyed to the Urban Local Bodies (ULB) that 50% of the fee received could be spent for civic infrastructure works in their respective areas, informed senior municipal officials.

If GHMC is removed from the equation, the remaining 72 ULBs received 93,129 applications under LRS, of which 38,212 are pending and 54,917 cases were cleared. So far, revenue of ₹306.60 crore has been generated while another ₹115.09 crore is expected.

The last deadline by which all the pending applications should have been processed, cleared or rejected was December 2017. Considering that there were scores of applications yet to be processed, the government has decided to give one more chance to the applicants.

Government lands

Delays in processing applications have been attributed to inspections, scrutiny, shortfall or non-submission of the requisite documents, non-payment of fees in full and in examining the title deeds in the land sections of the municipal bodies concerned.

Principal Secretary Arvind Kumar, in recent orders issued to the municipal commissioners concerned, made it clear that in case the applicants do not submit the required documents or do not pay fees in full, the LRS applications stand cancelled.

A major issue in municipalities was that initially, the software was not able to check government lands in the applications. Only HMDA and GHMC had the component of taking clearance from the revenue authorities to prevent government properties or plots under the Urban Land Ceiling from going into private hands.

It took a while for the districts to realise the lacunae and now the anomaly has been rectified. “It’s a thin line between regularising lands under the earlier scheme in slums and plots having unauthorised layouts. So, we will be clearing plots which do not have objectionable layouts such as lying within the water bodies and so on,” added senior officials.