BENGALURU: In a major relief for 300 homeowners in the upcoming Dr. Shivaram Karanth Layout, the Supreme Court has ordered them to be regularised and integrated into the upcoming Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) Layout. This is the first batch to be regularised and offers hope to the 1418 applicants who are seeking regularisation.
The order on Thursday (November 25) follows the Court-appointed Justice A V Chandrashekhar Committee's recent submission of two reports. Justice S Abdul Nazeer and Justice Sanjiv Khanna gave the verdict when hearing a case between BDA and the Government of Karnataka and Others. The Court said that their order is in light of the recommendations made in the third and fourth reports submitted by the Committee on November 10 and November 23 respectively.
The Committee was appointed by the Court with the precise objective of establishing the legality of constructions that had come up in the Layout between November 26, 2014, and August 3, 2018, so that a decision could be taken about their regularisation. The Apex court order had made it clear that any construction after the cut-off date would be deemed illegal.
Directing the BDA not to take possession of the lands or buildings specified in the Committee's report in the annexures L0001 to L0026, the Court said, "The Commissioner of the BDA is directed to issue Registration Certificates to the concerned applicants in a transparent manner within four weeks from today under the supervision of the Justice A V Chandrashekar Committee."
A top BDA official said, "The Possession Certificates would be issued within four weeks to the 300 property owners in line with the court verdict."
Jayakar Jerome, a member of the Committee told TNIE, "This is just the first installment of houses to be regularised. More are set to follow. The Committee has received 1418 applications from those who have built constructions between 2014 and 2018 within the SC fixed deadline dates."
The Committee had received a total of 6278 applications from the public dating back to December 31, 2008, till August 3, 2018, he said. "We have split them into three buckets: the 2014-2018 category, before-2014 and those who have begun their construction work before the August 3, 2018 deadline."
Detailed analysis by the team found out that a majority of the residential or commercial buildings in each of the categories have not got approval for their constructions from competent authorities.
The Layout will be BDA's second-biggest one with 18,975 sites to be developed in the villages between Dodaballapur and Hesaraghatta.