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.