CHENNAI: The Tamil Nadu government is likely to notify the draft guidelines in three months under Section 113-C of the Town and Country Planning Act of 1971 to regularise illegal buildings built before July 2007.
This comes after Madras High Court gave a three-month deadline to notify the rules after hearing a petition filed by CMDA monitoring committee member M G Devsahayam.
Hitting out at the government for holding consultative meeting on draft rules on July 8, Chief Justice S K Kaul had observed that there was no need for fresh consultative meeting when the final draft of rules and guidelines had already been framed.
Kaul’s observations have also come because during the July 8 meeting, headed by the Chief Secretary, there were plans to do away with some provisions of the draft guidelines which the officials believed were too generic.
Initially, the State government was to notify the rules and guidelines of the Section 113-C of Town and Country Planning Act, 1971, within four weeks from the order passed by the Madras High Court on March 3, 2016.
However, due to the Assembly elections and then the bureaucracy reshuffle in June, the High Court order was not complied with.
Interestingly, the monitoring committee’s role was defined again by the Madras High Court which stated that the committee would be consulted to finalise rules and guidelines.
The State government will now have to provide sufficient staff and infrastructure besides providing all files pertaining to illegal construction before the monitoring committee within three months.
Interestingly, the government had called for an emergency meeting on Wednesday to finalise draft rules and guidelines under Section 113-C of the Tamil Nadu Town and Country Planning Act. The chief plannerof the master plan unit and assistant director of the Directorate of Town and Country Planning will finalise the draft rules during the meeting.
Interestingly, the draft rules are planned when the DTCP does not have three layers of senior officials and similarly the CMDA also does not have a member secretary and a vice-chairman with the housing secretary officiating as the DTCP director, member secretary, vice-chairman as well as the final authority in deciding the draft rule.