Times
of India: Ahmedabad: Monday, 09 February 2015.
It took the
city survey department entrusted with preparing property cards for Amdavadis 27
years to ask the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) if any illegal
construction has been reported on any piece of land which has societies and
apartments.
This is an
important move as property cards issued to owners of tenements, bungalows,
flats, or commercial property should be carrying details of illegal extensions
or constructions, whether they are regularized, and whether there has been a
"change of use" of a property.
The
department is yet to update its own records regarding the "current use of
property" and the number of owners of a particular plot, in many areas of
the city. On January 17, the superintendent of land records wrote a letter to
the AMC and sought details of illegal constructions. The AMC has received
2,43,105 applications for regularization under the Impact Fee legislation, till
January 26, 2015.
Thanks to an
RTI application filed by a Kalupur resident, Pankaj Bhatt, the superintendent
of land records was forced to dig the city survey department's records and fish
out an October 1988 notification. This notification had required the
superintendent of land records to periodically review property records
regarding illegal constructions with the help of AMC data. These reports of
illegal constructions were supposed to be made part of property cards that are
being issued by the department to citizens. "If you were to buy a property
in Ahmedabad, revenue records tell you the history of a property," says
Bhatt. "But in Ahmedabad it is still an unfinished job. Of the 226 town
planning schemes that have been prepared in the city, the city survey
department has not even covered 25% of the city."
The largest
number of applications approved was 24,772 in the east zone while the largest
number of applications was from the south zone at 51,630.
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