TN extends amnesty scheme for unauthorised structures by 3 months as violators stay away

C Shivakumar @ Chennai:

Tamil Nadu government has extended the amnesty scheme by three months to grant lifeline to illegal buildings built before July 1, 2007 even as violators preferred to stay away rather than apply to regularise their unauthorised construction.

As the original amnesty scheme for unauthorised developments lapsed on Thursday, a top official from the housing department said that the scheme has been extended by three more months and gazette notification will be issued in this regard.

It is learnt that only 35 have applied for the scheme where in the developer or builder or house owner has to pay multiple infrastructure and amenities charges as penalty before regularising the buildings. 

Interestingly, the scheme is facing legal hurdle over its validity. A senior official said that the scheme is sub-judice now as such the court orders is awaited. However, the applications are being accepted.

But sources told Express that the current regularisation scheme is different from the pervious one. In the earlier regularisation scheme there were no conditions except credible evidence about the structure. Now they have included the required setback for regularisaing the building. “This has made many builders and developers think as T Nagar buildings won’t dall under the norms,” sources said. Previously, more than 80 per cent unauthorised buildings fail to get CMDA clearance despite depositing the money for processing the application. The reason given was they failed to provided sufficient evidence like power bills and water bills for regularising the building.

M G Deivasahayam, High Court appointed Monitoring Committee member of Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority says that unless the government takes a strong policy decision to raze down unauthorised structures, the construction of illegal structures will continue.

“It highlights that people know that they can get away by building unauthorised structures. The owners and developers of unauthorised structures are aware that by greasing the palm of officers they can evade action against the buildings,” he said.

Deivasahayam who has been fighting against giving the second lifeline to unauthorised buildings in the city said that there are thousands of unauthorised multi-storied structures and around lakhs of structures under special, commercial and other structures having minor deviations.

He said the biggest violators are the buildings in T Nagar and they are continuing for the last two decades. “When no action has been taken till now, they will feel that they can continue to do so either by approaching courts or paying bribe to officials,” he said.

Interestingly, the T Nagar buildings have not applied under the regularisation scheme. A builder says that if he has to apply for a regularisation scheme, he has pay in crores and yet he is not sure whether the application will be processed or not. There have been cases where in many have paid during the previous regularisation scheme and have yet to hear from the CMDA, he said.

Interestingly, Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority has started processing 1,600 applications submitted under the previous regularisation scheme to regularise unauthorised building built before 1999 recently. “CMDA has been saying that they don’t have staff. Either CMDA as a whole should be shut down or action should be taken against those who failed to do their duty,” said a former planner.