Tamil Nadu's housing department lodges complaint over illegal registration of unauthorised plots

Tepid response to the amnesty scheme for unapproved plots has led to the housing and urban development department lodging a complaint with the registration department over registration of unauthorised plots sans rules. Unapproved plots that were registered as housing site before October 20, 2016 are alone eligible to be re-registered, while other plots must come under the purview of the regularisation scheme for future sale. Despite multiple extensions given to the amnesty scheme , it has not received the targeted number of applications. Official sources with the registration department said that senior officials from the housing and urban development department took up the issue of unauthorised registrations of unapproved plots. “For instance, if there are 100 plots in an unauthorised layout and 40 were registered ahead of 20-10-2016, the remaining 60 cannot be registered without undergoing the regularisation scheme. However, the issue remains that the registration of such plots that have not complied to the rules are being registered leading to poor response for the regularisation of unauthorised plots scheme,” an official said. Till June 10 this year, only 3.35 lakh applications have been filed out of the estimated number of more than 14 lakh unapproved plots across Tamil Nadu. The amnesty scheme launched on May 4 last year was given three extensions. This apart, the government waived a major share of the penalty imposed on unapproved plots for regularisation by doing away with the Open Space Reservation (OSR) charges last year. However, the scheme could not attract good number of takers.