Hyderabad News.GHMC Allows Rampant Illegal Construction in Hyderabad
Hyderabad News. DC 14.07.2010
(Excl Ventures News.)There are nearly 40,000 buildings in the city that are either partially or totally unauthorised. These buildings do not qualify for regularisation under the Building Penalisation Scheme (BPS) and yet the municipal authorities have not demolished a single structure.
Most of these buildings have been constructed on endowment, government or Wakf land. The owners of the buildings have applied for regularisation to the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) under the BPS scheme, but the GHMC has denied their applications. As per government orders, buildings that come up on roads, lake beds, full tank level area, Wakf, endowments and government lands, cannot be regularised.
In the last three years since the BPS was announced, the corporation has not taken up any major demolition drive against unauthorised constructions in the city. Except for demolishing two dozen buildings on various counts and sealing some commercial establishments, the GHMC has not put its bulldozers to work. Nor has any builder been blacklisted for violating building rules. This, even though unauthorised constructions continue to increase in the city.
The GHMC has not even bothered to verify or conduct a survey in the city to ascertain how many existing unauthorised buildings there are whose owners have not submitted applications under the BPS.
The state government offered BPS as a one-time opportunity for citizens to regularise constructions that are unauthorised or have deviated from the sanctioned plan. Government Order 901 (dated December 31, 2007) clearly states that it is a compulsory disclosure scheme.
A senior official in the GHMC confirmed that nearly 40,000 applications were set aside. Officials defended this stating that they cannot take up demolition of such buildings immediately.
“Many of these 40,000 applications are also covered under GO 166, envisaging regularisation of properties on government lands. Then there are properties which come up in ULC (urban land ceiling) excess lands. Once it is clear that buildings cannot be regularised under BPS, GO 166 and other schemes, all such buildings will be demolished. Besides, we are presently concentrating on clearing pending BPS applications that are eligible for regularisation,” a senior official said.
The last date for clearing pending BPS applications is August 15, 2010.
Comment : The 40,000 number is just the tip of an Iceberg. This is number of buildings whose owners applied for BPS but were denied. Only fraction of owners having illegal structures have applied for BPS. In our opinion, 75 % of all structures in Hyderabad are unauthorized constructions. The fact is that GHMC and its officials do not control on-going constructions, all over Hyderabad. They look at plans of buildings which are submitted to them by straight-forward people who are then forced to bribe, else approval will get withheld. Keyword Tags Hyderabad News,GHMC, BPS, BPS Scheme
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