Having notified regularisation of 895 unauthorised colonies, the Delhi Government has now written to the Ministry of Urban Development seeking major relaxations in the regularisation norms.
The letter has been written as there are a large number of colonies that were regularised in September last year but do not fulfil the criteria for regularisation and unless the guidelines are amended, the colonies cannot be regularised. 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.
In a letter dated April 30 to Urban Development Secretary Sudhir Krishna, Delhi Urban Development Department Secretary RK Srivastava has urged to ratify certain clauses of guidelines for unauthorised colonies, so that the regularisation process can be completed.
“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,” Srivastava said in the letter.
“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, Srivastava stated 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.