HC appointed members missing during 49th monitoring committee meeting

C Shivakumar

Chennai:

A 49^th monitoring committee meeting was for the first time held without the participation of the high court appointed non-official members.

A Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority official rejected that the non-official members boycotted the meeting and said that they did not participate in the meeting.

The monitoring committee has 12 members, six official and six non-official. The non-official members appointed by the High Court were opposing the Regularisation Scheme 2012 which they claim goes against the principles and cut off date set by the 2006 High Court order.

The members felt that extending the cut off date from July 27, 1999 to July 1, 2007 is not sanctioned by the Court. The government after notifying the scheme, has recently published the guidelines and rules to implement it. The members felt that this move clearly shows that the state government and the CMDA have decided to go ahead with the regularisation despite the non-official members protesting against it.

Surprisingly, not even a single application has been received in Chennai Metropolitan Area. Monitoring committee members attribute it to their challenging the issue before the court. “There is uncertainty over the regularisation scheme, so why any one would go and pay the money,” they said.

But town planning and CMDA sources blame it on the lacunae in the rule. “The current regularization scheme did not take lessons from the earlier 1999 regularisation scheme which itself was a failure as very less applications were received,” they said.

“They are asking for the certified copy of Property Tax Assessment Working Sheet, which is available to those buildings in corporation limits only. The buildings in panchayats never have these working sheets neither do the institutions, which are run by trusts. Similarly, the stringent rules put forth under the regularization scheme is also making the violators shy of approaching for regularization of their building. It should have been done irrespective of any violation,” the sources said.

The biggest question is while the government has legalized the buildings till 2007 what will happen to the illegal buildings built between 2007-12, he added.