BENGALURU: Discontent is brewing among the 308 families who have purchased 3BHK flats from the Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) at Valagerahalli. For, BDA plans to hold an auction among house owners to allot the available 144 covered car parking lots, on December 22. The auction for 3BHK allottees in Phase- III was initially supposed to be held on November 30. However, BDA postponed it to this month following an appeal from the allottees earlier not to go ahead with it. In fact, this is the first time BDA is going in for an auction of parking lots.
There are two reasons why residents are opposing the auction. “BDA has fixed the minimum price for the auction at Rs 1,000 per sqft. This would ensure these lots cost between Rs 1.65 lakh and Rs 3 lakh, depending on the dimension, which we feel is costly,” said a representative of the Kailash BDA Apartment Owners Welfare Association.
Secondly, residents feel that parking lots fall under the undivided common area and all allottees already have a stake in it. “BDA does not plan to issue Title Deeds after auctioning them like it is being done in the case of any other property. It would merely issue a licence,” said another resident. Putting forth legal arguments, owners say the Karnataka Apartment Owners Act 1972 forbids sale of parking spaces in the common area.
“There have been Supreme Court rulings in this connection oo earlier,” residents point out. Most of the owners are strongly opposing the auction move but plead anonymity. BDA says it will go ahead A top BDA official told Express, “The cost of land per square feet is Rs 10,000 on Mysuru Road now. Fixing the parking rate at Rs 1,000 per square feet is not at all high.” The move is perfectly right according to our in-house legal team, the official added.
“We had clearly published about this in the notification put up at the time of selling the flats,” he added. Owners too concede that was done. “What we propose to issue will be a onetime licence, which will have lifetime validity. We have already handed over the undivided land to the residents when we handed over the flats. There is no question of handing over Title Deed for this space again. We can only issue licences now.” The BDA official also stressed that the arking space was not included in the cost of the flats.