Telangana: Just 60 staff, 1.32 lakh applications

Hyderabad: Plot owners who applied for the Layout Regularisation Scheme in HMDA limits in response to the notification issued in November last year will have to wait for one more year for regularisation.

This is because the Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Authority had received 1.31 lakh LRS and 31,000 building regularisation scheme applications.
Since BRS process has been stuck in legal dispute, the HMDA is currently taking up only verification of LRS applications.

The HMDA has only 30 staff members to process the large number of applications. Another 30 personnel have been drafted for the work. The HMDA has formed 30 two-member teams to verify LRS applications but they could not process even 15 applications per day during the last three months.

Going by this, the officials expect the LRS process to be completed by August next year. The HMDA brought the issue of severe shortage of staff to the notice of municipal administration and urban development department and sought permission to appoint additional staff.

A senior official from the municipal administartion department said, “The response for LRS was huge in HMDA limits. We have received 1,31,990 applications for LRS, and 37,110 for the BRS. As the BRS issue is pending in court, we are taking up LRS applications for now.”

He said the government expected to earn '500 crore through the LRS. “It all depends on how quickly we can complete the process for which the shortage of staff is a major concern," he said.

A large number of applicants sought regularisation of land belon-ging to the government or public parks, and in the full tank level of lakes. These cannot be regularised.

Following this, the government ordered a thorough ground-level verification of every application before recommeding regularisation. “This is taking a lot of time. The staff is visiting every plot and crosschecking with records. It is not possible to clear more than 15 applications a day,” the officer said.