Wednesday, October 22, 2014

No respite from HC to 2,700 Shastri Nagar shopkeepers.

Times of India: Meerut: Wednesday, 22 October 2014.
The Allahabad high court has dismissed the appeal of the Shastri Nagar Central Market Association, which had petitioned the court to regularize 2,700 business establishments that had come up in a residential area.
These shops were in an area developed by the Awas Vikas Parishad as residential establishments in early 1970s. In the last four decades, many of them gradually changed into commercial centres.
Association secretary Vinod Arora said, "We had petitioned the court to regularize the commercial set-ups as the authorities, in all these years, never thought of developing commercial set-ups, schools or hospitals. That was why residential areas became commercial zones. However, the HC has dismissed the petition, saying it could be filed as a Public Interest Litigation. So a few of us have again filed those."
Markets cannot come up in residential areas, under the Parishad Regulation Act, 1965. There is also no provision of compounding charges on the change of land use (CLU) under this act and demolition is the only course of action under the law.
In November 2011, an RTI application was filed in the office of PV Jaganmohan, then housing commissioner of the state, demanding information on the number of residential properties in which CLU was done between 1995 and 2011.
On the basis of the response to that application, objections were raised at the office of Umesh Mittal, appellate authority, Awas Vikas, Meerut.
The RTI applicant, Lokesh Khurana, was informed that the housing belt developed in the areas of Shastri Nagar and Jagriti Vihar had been converted unlawfully into commercial properties, resulting in chaos in the area. Bank offices, massive showrooms and hotels had come up in space meant for homes.
Another noticeable legal loophole is that under the Awas Vikas Act, a property that undergoes CLU does not remain freehold property. The ground reality, however, is that properties which are entirely commercial ones have been given freehold property status by the Awas Vikas Authority, resulting in unprecedented escalation of property cost in this area.
The Awas Vikas authorities were given three weeks by the court in Nov 2012 to explain the lapses. The authority accepted all the irregularities, and also mentioned that there was no provision to regularize these.
The Awas Vikas Authority accepted then that CLU has been done on 2,700 properties and said that sufficient police force was not available to demolish these. Then DIG of Meerut, Prem Prakash, said that no forces were requested from his office.
Soon afterwards, the authority issued a notice in newspapers to all owners of properties whose land use was changed, directing them to reconvert their properties into residential ones or face demolition.
Since no action was taken in two years, on May 27 this year Lokesh Khurana filed another petition in the Allahabad high court, drawing attention to the setting up of even more commercial establishments in the area.
Superintending engineer Umesh Mittal of the Awas Vikas Parishad told TOI that action was being taken in accordance with the master plan 2021, and fresh notice was issued in the month of September. "All commercial property owners have been given six month notices, after which their properties will be sealed," he said.