Land regularisation may trigger illegal buildings

HYDERABAD: The ongoing land regularisation scheme will lead to a strange situation wherein illegal buildings will later exist on regularised lands.

The TS government is only taking up regularisation of lands on which buildings currently exist. The buildings existing on such lands will thus be treated as illegal buildings, which need to be regularised again.

The cash-starved government has made its intentions clear of earning “double revenues” from the same applicants in the name of regularisation of illegal lands in the first stage, and under the Building Regular-isation Scheme (BRS) in the second stage.

The GHMC will be asked to come out with a BRS later after the LRS process is completed. As per existing norms, regularisation of 125 sq. yards would be done free of cost for the poor provided their annual income is less than Rs 2 lakh.

From 125 to 250 sq. yards, 50 per cent of the market value will be collected, for 250 to 500 sq. yards, 75 per cent of market value and plots admeasuring over 500 sq. yards, 100 per cent market value will be collected.

Interestingly, thousands of people have encroached on lands in the city in the range of 300 sq. yards, to 1,000 sq. yards but no buildings exist on them.

Only small sheds or single rooms have been built on those lands. This has now proved to be a boon for them to secure the entire land under this pretext.