Few days before the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Government led by Arvind Kejriwal resigned, it had recommended to the Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD) to put on hold the draft notification for regularisation of 895 unauthorised colonies as it wanted to bring in more effective regulations. The matter is being kept in cold storage as the Centre did not accord its approval for the same. This has resulted stopping of amendment in the regularisation of 895 unauthorised colonies in Delhi.
In a letter to Secretary (MoUD) dated February 11, 2014, Delhi Government has requested that the approval of the draft amendment notification sent by this Government vide letter No.1.33/UC/UD/Policy/2004/Pt.file/IV/982-983 dated 20.09.2013 of GNCTD may kindly be kept in abeyance for the time being as the Delhi Government will forward a comprehensive draft amendment or replacement of existing regulation shortly.
Following this letter, the MoUD has kept in abeyance amendment of the regularisation of unauthorised colonies. “The amendment proposed by the then Sheila Dikshit Government for regularisation of 895 unauthorised colonies is on paper till date. The MoUD has kept in abeyance the draft amendment sent by the State Government,” said a senior official of UD Ministry.
It is noted that Delhi Government had earlier written to UDM seeking relaxation in norms on regularisation of unauthorised colonies as the State Government is finding difficult to regularise 895 unauthorised colonies as these colonies do not fulfil the criteria for regularisation and unless the guidelines are amended, the colonies cannot be regularised. The Government has urged to ratify certain clauses of guidelines for unauthorised colonies, so that the regularisation process can be completed.
This is the reason why despite issuing notification order for regularisation of 895 colonies last year, the department has failed to issue gazette notification of regularisation and registry is not being allowed in these colonies as status of land is not cleared.
“About 583 colonies are mixed up of private and public lands and till such time cost of land for the public land is recovered, the colony would not get legally regularised. Similarly, 450 colonies do not meet the built up percentage of norms of minimum 50 per cent as required in 2007 and also may not be having 10 per cent in the year 2002 to prove their existence as on March 31, 2002. The present ground situation would be entirely different and the regularisations may need to be amended to bring those unauthorised colonies that existed on March 31, 2002 within the ambit of regularisation,” the letter said.
“As neither the revised guidelines 2007 nor the regulations 2008 provide any definition regarding existence of unauthorised colony as on March 31, 2002, the Delhi Government had taken a decision for administration convenience that for determining the existence of the colony at least 10 per cent of the area of the colony should have been under recognisable cluster type habitation as on March 31, 2002. The requirement of documents which do not materially affect the fixation of boundary deciding the eligibility of the colony may need to be relaxed and the Central Government may empower Delhi Government to consider relaxation in this regard,” the letter read.
On the affluent colonies, the letter said that the aspect of the affluence could not be determined by the State Government while considering regularisation of the colonies as no norms have been provided in the regulations. “Earlier, 17 colonies were identified by the State Government as affluent by taking only size of the plots into consideration. If Mathur Committee report is accepted by the Centre, these colonies should be considered at par with other three affluent colonies,” the letter said.
The letter further stated that the procedure adopted by Surveyor of India while fixing the boundary and calculating the built up percentage may need ratification by the Central Government.
