BENGALURU: The Supreme Court has ordered the Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) to put an end to constructions coming up on the Dr Shivaram Karanth Layout after August 3, 2018. Buildings constructed beyond this cannot be regularised and are liable to be demolished, the court decreed.
A division bench comprising Justice S Abdul Nazeer and Justice Sanjeev Khanna on Wednesday called upon the Karnataka government to provide BDA with seven engineers within a fortnight to assist it. The bench mandated deputing an executive engineer, two assistant executive engineers and four assistant engineers, to the authority.
The court pointed out that in its earlier order on December 3, 2020, it had asked the BDA to carry out satellite imagery of the layout within three days and to conduct the exercise on a monthly basis to identify new constructions that crop up. "Despite the order, new constructions have been coming up in the land proposed for acquisition to form the layout," it pointed out.
Coming down heavily on BDA for not taking possession of land in the layout as directed by it, the court directed it to speed up the acquisition process and submit a report in a fortnight.
The Justice A V Chandrashekhar Committee appointed by it to facilitate regularisation of legal constructions that have come up in the layout prior to August 3, 2018, had also been asked by the apex court to give the status report on 17 smaller layouts within it that had been approved by the BDA earlier. The committee, after a joint inspection and assessment of documents, has stated that 13 out of 17 layouts were in order, the court said. The court ordered BDA to leave these layouts untouched during layout formation.
It has also extended the time given by the committee to submit its report on legal constructions till March 31, 2022. The court has scheduled its next hearing on July 29.