In a bid to discourage sporadic development of farmhouses and encourage eco-friendly dwelling units in agriculture zones of the state, the Manohar Lal Khattar Government in Haryana has come out with a new policy for change of land (CLU) use with mandatory conditions that such premises would not be used for commercial purposes and have tree plantation on at least 15 percent of its land.

The policy notified by the Town and Country Planning Department, Haryana envisages the farmhouses as self sustainable units in the state. Under the policy for grant of CLU permission to set up eco-friendly farmhouse in agriculture zones in Haryana, the eco-friendly farmhouse has been defined as a house constructed by the owner of a farm at his land for the purpose of main dwelling unit (residential) and ancillary use (farm/animal shed or ward/servant quarters).

It would be mandatory to install rain water harvesting systems, ensure 100 percent treatment and reuse of waste water, 100 percent on site processing of all green/animal waste, tree plantation on at least 15 percent of farm land and installation of solar water heating systems in such premises.

The new CLU policy assumes significance in view of illegal farmhouses that have come up on agriculture zones in the state. The policy will be applicable in the agriculture zone of hyper, high, medium and low potential towns beyond 500 mtrs distance from the urbanizable zone of respective development plans.

In addition to permissible ground coverage/FAR, a swimming pool with maximum size of 50 sqm has been allowed subject to the conditions that it will be exclusively for personal use of the plot owner and not for commercial use. Apart from this, no commercial use of the site i.e. usage as banquet hall, party hall, recreational, religious, institutional shall be allowed.

As per the policy, the minimum area allowed for a farmhouse would be one acre (4047 sqm) and only one dwelling unit would be allowed. The owners of plots ranging from one acre to two acres would be allowed to develop a farmhouse in agriculture zones with maximum permissible ground coverage of eight percent and permissible floor area ratio (FAR) would be 0.12. For plots above two acres, the permissible ground coverage would be 800 sqm and FAR will be 1000 sqm. In both categories of plots, the maximum permissible height will be 11 mtrs. The ancillary building is allowed on one percent of the total area of farmhouse with maximum limit of 150 sqm (single storey upto 4 mtrs height).

A setback (the distance of a house or structure from a property line) of minimum 15 metres at front and 6 meters on all other sides of the property shall be mandatory, the policy stated. The provisions of the Haryana Apartment Ownership Act, 1983 shall not be applicable to the sites approved under this policy. In case of any misuse of the building, the premises shall be sealed and penal action shall be taken under relevant sections, it said.

The district level monitoring committee by deputy commissioner shall make regular checks of the premises to ascertain that the policy provisions are not violated. The concerned sub divisional magistrate, superintendent of police will be members and district town planner concerned will be members secretary of this committee, the policy added. Notably, the State Government had last year released a policy allowing farmhouses in the residential zones ranging from 2,000 square metres  to 10,117.5 square metres (2.5 acres) with maximum height of 15 meters in Haryana.