Cabinet nod for encroachment regularisation in Bengaluru

Bengaluru: In a major relief for residential properties guilty of encroachments in Bengaluru, the state Cabinet on Wednesday approved regularisation of such encroachments upto 30x 40ft, 18 kms from the city centre in all corporation limits under the government's Akrama Sakrama scheme.

 It also gave its  nod for regularisaiton of such properties three kilometers from the centre of town in Town Municipality limits, and 10 kms from the city centre in city municipality limits. The regularisation will  be done after imposition of a penalty of Rs 10,000 on general category encroachers and Rs 5,000 on SC/ST  encroachers.

Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister, T B Jayachandra, who gave details of the Cabinet’s decision following its meeting, also told reporters that it had given its consent for setting up a Special Purpose Vehicle to bring gas from Dhabol to Bengaluru. “A Karnataka Natural Gas Company Limited has been set up  and the KSIIDC will oversee execution of the project,” he explained.

The Cabinet also decided to recommend to the Centre that four communities, who  migrated to the state from Bangladesh in 1964 and settled in Sindanur taluk, should be given  a backward class tag. As many as 8000 people from the Namashudra community, 118 from the Pod/Poundra community and 158 from the Rajabanshi community are today living in the state and the backward class tag could make them eligible for several benefits.

In other decisions, the Cabinet approved outsourcing of  housing projects of various agencies of the Housing Ministry such as the Karnataka Housing Board,  which have been stalled across the state for various reasons.

Explaining that construction of many projects under various schemes had come to a standstill over the last three years, Mr Jayachandra explained there was a provision to outsource them to expedite their completion.

“We want to construct four lakh more new houses and call for Rs 10 lakh new applications,” he added.