Bengaluru, DHNS: Notification issued for buildings built before Oct 19, 2013. The state government on Saturday paved the way for regularising properties that have been built by violating norms in urban areas of the state.

The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) and other urban bodies will issue notifications on Monday asking violators to regularise buildings built before October 19, 2013, by paying a penalty. They will get four months’ time to submit applications after which no exemption will be given.

The decision to issue the notification was taken at a meeting chaired by Chief Minister Siddaramaiah. This was the first meeting chaired by the chief minister after the high court scrapped a batch of petitions questioning the Akrama-Sakrama scheme. According to the BBMP, there are at least 1.54 lakh properties in Bengaluru, which await the Akrama-Sakrama scheme.

Eshwar B Khandre, Minister of State for Municipalities and Local Bodies, told reporters that regularisation of buildings will be done according to norms laid down in the Karnataka Town and Country Planning Rules.

“Emphasis was laid on making the process transparent. The applications will be received manually as well as online. This scheme will be applicable to the BBMP, 10 municipal corporations and 60 urban bodies,” said Khandre.

Bengaluru Development Minister K J George said residential buildings and commercial buildings with less than 50% and 25% deviation respectively will be regularised.

“If the deviation is more than the prescribed limit, then they will be demolished,” said George.

A senior bureaucrat in the Urban Development Department said owners will have to produce some document to authenticate that the building was built before October 19, 2013.

“In case of unauthorised structures on agriculture (revenue) land, it is usually difficult to identify the day it was built but there will be some document such as water bill, electricity bill or gas connection to show that the building was built before October 19, 2013. We will accept them as a proof,” said the officer.

Ambiguity over GPA

There remains an ambiguity over the fate of properties where the owners still possess General Power of Attorney (GPA) although the buildings were constructed many years ago. In most of such cases, the seller of the property either refuses to register the property in the name of the person who holds the GPA or there is some legal hitch preventing the registration.

BBMP Commissioner N Manjunath Prasad said neither was there any discussion on this issue nor the Akrama Sakrama rules have any space for it. These structures, if not regularis-ed under the present Akrama Sakrama scheme, face the thr-eat of demolition once the four-month window period is over.