Two of the three-month window given by the city Corporation for regularisation of unauthorised construction is over, yet the local body has received only a handful of applications for the process.
The cold response has left the Corporation authorities perplexed, as the number of unauthorised constructions, which are marked as ‘UA’ during surveys, is far more in the city.
The Local Self Government department, had in February this year, issued the Kerala Municipality Building (Regularisation of Unauthorised Construction) Rules, 2018, as per which unauthorised buildings constructed before July 31, 2017 could be regularised after levying a fee. The window for regularisation is set to expire on May 15.
Less than 20 requests
“We have got only less than 20 applications till now. The unauthorised constructions in the corporation area will come close to 500 in number. In addition, there are cases of unauthorised extensions made on existing structures. So, we were expecting more numbers. This is mostly aimed at small house owners who are facing difficulties due to that ‘UA’ number. Probably, the cold response could be because of lack of awareness or maybe they are confused about the amount to be paid,” says an official of the Corporation’s engineering wing.
The owners of the building assessed as unauthorised need to pay three times that of the normal building tax amount. The building also cannot be used for any commercial purposes, until it is regularised. The Corporation officials are planning to send notices to the owners of those houses assessed as unauthorised to get the structures regularised.
In the February order, the government had also reduced steeply the compounding fee for unauthorised constructions in municipal areas. For single family residential buildings, there was a basic compounding fee of 10 times the permit fee and one-twentieth of the fair value of the land multiplied by the total floor area. For residential buildings up to 300 square meters, the fee was 50% of the above.
The fee has now been done away with for residential buildings up to 60 square meters. For the rest of the residential buildings up to 300 square meters, this has been put into three slabs of Rs. 3,000, Rs. 20,000 and Rs. 30,000 each. But for other buildings (including commercial) up to 100 square meters, the rates that were 20 times of the permit fee has been reduced to 10 times the permit fee now.
Buildings constructed before July 31, 2017 can be regularised Compounding fee reduced steeply Close to 500 unauthorised buildings in Corporation area
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