Court Strikes Down Govt effort to cheat public by BPS scheme instead of penalizing builders /Govt Officers
DC 25.01.08

The much-maligned Building Penalisation Scheme has suffered one more jolt with the Andhra Pradesh High Court staying the issuance of regularisation certificates to building owners for the time being. The bench gave these directions while dealing with a petition filed by Mr K.H.V. Prasad, a resident of Kakatiyanagar, who argued that the government does not have the power to approve irregular constructions.

Already, BPS has been pilloried by citizens and political parties for charging high penalisation rates and for selectively targeting building owners, while steering clear of builders and culpable officials. The scheme is meant to regularise deviations from the original design of buildings. The HC directive also comes at a time when the Chief Minister, Dr Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy, has called a meeting of officials to discuss the possibility of reducing the penalisation rates to stave off public rage.

A division bench comprising Chief Justice A.R. Dave and Justice Ramesh Rangnathan on Thursday allowed officials to continue with the scheme but asked them to keep final orders in abeyance. It also asked the government to file an affidavit on BPS by February 11. This means that the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation will not be able to dispose of any application submitted under BPS for regularisation of buildings until further orders from the HC. As such, the scheme has evoked timid response from the citizenry and very few people have submitted applications for regularisation. GHMC officials put on a brave face and said that regularisation orders issued for the first batch of 60 applications would remain valid.

“Unless the HC says anything in this regard, the buildings related to the 60 applications can be considered regularised,” said the GHMC Additional Commissioner, Mr K. Dhanunjaya Reddy. He added that GHMC would continue to process applications and carry out on the spot inspections till the HC issued final orders. “So property owners can continue to apply,” he said. Also, the case pertained only to BPS and was not linked to the similar Layout Regularisation Scheme. “People can still apply for LRS and officials can dispose the cases,” said the additional commissioner.

Meanwhile, GHMC officials who visited residential colonies to create awareness have been facing the ire of the populace.

“They have the cheek to ask us to apply for BPS though they still have not disposed of all the applications submitted for the Building Regularisation Scheme of 1998,” said a building owner. Of the 26,029 applications submitted under BRS in 1998, only 12,145 have been cleared so far. The GHMC Chief City Planner, Mr Purushotham Reddy, said there were legal problems relating to majority of the other applications.