HYDERABAD: Refusing to pass an interim order without knowing the Telangana government’s stand on the Layout Regularisation Scheme (LRS), the High Court on Thursday asked it to file a counter affidavit in two weeks in response to a PIL that challenged the constitutional validity of GO 131.
The government order (GO) was issued on August 31, 2020, for the regularisation of unapproved and illegal layouts under the LRS in both rural and urban areas of Telangana.
A division bench of the High Court, comprising Chief Justice Raghvendra Singh Chauhan and Justice B Vijayasen Reddy, issued the notice to the government while dealing with the PIL filed by the Forum for Good Governance, an NGO represented by its secretary M Padmanabha Reddy, seeking to suspend the operation of the impugned GO.
Senior counsel S Satyam Reddy, appearing for the petitioner NGO, contended that the GO, which contains the Telangana Regularisation of Unapproved and Illegal Layout Rules, 2020, violates various sections of the Telangana Urban Areas (Development) Act, 1975; GHMC Act, 1955; Telangana Town Planning Act, 1920; State Municipalities Act, 2019; HMDA Act, 2008; and Telangana Panchayat Raj Act, 2018.
Satyam Reddy said if the illegal and unauthorised layouts, which are spread across the HMDA and GHMC limits and also in smaller towns and gram panchayats, are regularised by collecting a fee, then there would be no purpose in having a development plan. The existing plans and various Acts/Rules would become irrelevant, he said.
The government has not left any area in the State and is forcing the people to cough up the regularisation amount. The people, particularly the poor and middle class, are finding it difficult to pay the LRS charges, he added. He urged the court to pass an interim direction that the government’s decision would be subjected to the outcome of the current PIL case.
Meanwhile, as promised by Municipal Administration and Urban Development Minister KT Rama Rao, the government has revised the LRS charges. According to the revised GO 135, issued on Thursday, the government will collect 20 per cent of the land value, if the land value is up to Rs 3,000 per yard. This comes after a number of requests were received, stating that the regularisation charges specified in GO 131 were high and had to be made equal to that provided in the 2015 LRS. Accordingly, the Telangana Regularisation of Unapproved and Illegal Layout Rules, 2020, have been finalised as per the rates of the regularisation provided in the the LRS, 2015.
According to the GO issued by Chief Secretary Somesh Kumar, if 10 per cent open space is not available in the unapproved layout, pro-rata open space charges at 14 per cent of the plot value as on the date of registration shall be paid. The LRS charges include nala charges too. The State government had issued GO 131 on August 8, 2020 for regularising unauthorised layouts. But people said they could not pay the huge amounts as the pandemic had dented their income. Accordingly, the government decided to implement the rules of the LRS GO 151 issued in 2015.
GO 131 had only four slabs, while the revised one has seven. In GO 131, the regularisation fee was 25 per cent (up to Rs 3,000 per sq yard), 50 per cent (from Rs 3,001 to Rs 5,000 per sq yard), 75 per cent (from Rs 5,000 to Rs 10,000 sq yard) and 100 per cent if the land value per sq yard is above Rs 10,000.
Koppula Sreedhar Reddy of the Telangana Real Estate Developers Association (TREDA) told Express that the revised rates were a relief for the middle class. He welcomed the government’s decision to collect 14 per cent charges on the value of the land at the time of registration.