Bengaluru: People pay price for unauthorised layouts

Bengaluru: With the BDA  listing unauthorised layouts formed by various developers without the sanction of its town  planning wing, thousands of gullible people who bought sites in these layouts will now have to shell out money to have their property regularised under the Akrama Sakrama scheme. 

“We will also have to come out with documents to be eligible for the Sakrama scheme,” noted one site owner.

The struggle to get a  relatively litigation free BDA site and the authority’s failure to meet Bengalureans' needs when forming layouts,  led  to the mushrooming of private developers, who did not care about town planning rules, say sources.

“Why did the BDA allow private layouts to mushroom ? No layout can come up overnight. Most of the layouts have been formed with the connivance of BDA engineers and town planning officials. Today we have  a spate of unauthorised layouts as the BDA has failed to take action and levy penalty on their developers," added an officer.

Developers need to get a layout plan sanction from a town planning authority like the BDA and the agency in turn looks for open space, parks, roads, drains and civic amenity sites in a layout before giving its approval . In some cases private developers have got their layout plans sanctioned by village and town panchayats, which have no legal validation, going by sources .

Coming down hard on the BDA for “miserably failing” in its duties, RTI activist, B. M. Shivakumar says it should not have allow unauthorised layouts to come up in its jurisdiction.  “The mushrooming of the unauthorised layouts reveals the unholy nexus between  corrupt officials and private developers. Some of the layouts have been formed by encroaching upon government land,” he added.

BDA commissioner, Rajkumar Khatri, when contacted, said that a committee had been formed to look into the unauthorised layouts.