Succumbing to the pressure exerted by its coalition partner — the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD)-led State Government has finally set up an in-house committee for looking into the “astronomical” charges for regularisation of the unauthorised colonies across Punjab.
The four-member committee — including State Revenue Minister Bikram Singh Majithia, PWD Minister Sharanjit Singh Dhillon, Industries Minister Anil Joshi, and Chief Parliamentary Secretary Som Parkash — will be meeting on Friday to review the regularisation charges under the State Government’s recently announced policy of regularisation of unauthorised colonies. The “new formula”, when agreed upon by the committee, would be put before the Council of Ministers for its approval in the meeting, scheduled to be held on July 23.
Punjab Government had put a stamp of approval on the long-pending demand of colonisers to regularise the unauthorised colonies the previous month in the Cabinet meeting. With this, the State Government had made it clear that it would be one last chance for the colonisers and individual plot holders to regularise their unauthorised structures by paying something between Rs 1.20 lakh to Rs 15 lakh per acre as regularisation charges depending upon the area in which the colonies were set up between 1995 till before April 1, 2013.
Opposing the “high” regularisation fees for regularising the unauthorised colonies in the State, the BJP has been impressing upon the SAD to “review” the present fee structure under the policy. To put forth the party’s same stand on the issue, the Atate BJP president along with senior party leaders, including Balram ji Dass Tandon and others had met Punjab Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal on late Wednesday evening asking him to review the charges.
“We had a meeting with Sukhbir Badal, and other senior leaders yesterday in the evening in ludhiana. Before us, a delegation of the colonisers had also met the Deputy Chief Minister urging to substantially reduce charges and fees for regularising illegal colonies. On this, Sukhbir agreed to review the same, and set up a four-member committee to look into the demands,” Punjab BJP president Kamal Sharma told The Pioneer.
“The committee will be meeting the colonisers and individuals also to listen to their grievances with the new policy. To this, the committee would take note of and reach an amicable solution,” he added. BJP, in its core committee meeting on Tuesday, decided to meet the Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal asking the State Government to review the current charges and fix the amount that would be easy for the residents or colonisers to pay. Owing to Badal’s ill-health, the matter could not be discussed with him, and committee was formed at the deputy CM’s level.