High Court of Himachal Pradesh on Thursday reserved its decision on regularisation of unauthorised constructions in the State through the controversial Town and Country Planning Regularis-ation Amendment Act-2017 also known as retention policy.
The Himachal Pradesh Assembly had approved the Town and Country Planning Regularisation Amendment Act, 2016 in the Monsoon session last year and the act had got Governor’s assent early this year. More than 13,000 unauthorised constructions were expected to benefit.
In a PIl filed in the High Court, petitioner Jiya lal had said that the TCP amendment act was brought keeping in mind political gains, while the security and safety of people living in unregularised or unauthorised buildings was not taken into consideration.
Himachal Pradesh Governor Acharya Dev Vrat too had sought clarification from the State before giving his assent to the bill over safely of buildings. He had also expressed his reservations on the silence of legislations about structural safety of buildings to be regularised under the amendments and lack of provisions for taking action against the errant officers, who allow unauthorised construction.
As many as 12,694 unauthorised constructions were expected to be regularised in the notified areas of the State due to the act. The act empowered the civic bodies in municipal area to charge regularisation fee at Rs 400 per square meters, however compounding fee would also be charged.
The Act has special provision for a specific period of one year as a ‘one time’ exemption by charging deterrent composition fee instead of demolition of such large scale un-authorised constructions.
During the course of hearing, the State counsel told the court that the act was cleared by the State Assembly after referring it to select committee. He said that State would not demolish the constructions made by the people and it had decided to adopt the act to regularise unauthorised constructions as a one-time relief.
Having heard the contentions of both the sides, the Division Bench of acting Chief Justice Sanjay Karol and Justice Sandeep Sharma reserved the decision.