Setback for owners of Chandigarh Housing Board houses

Ramkrishan Upadhyay

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, September 1

Giving a jolt to hundreds of owners of CHB houses, the Architecture Department has overruled the recommendations made by the need-based committee for regularising rooms, constructed in the courtyard without following building bylaws.

Sources said the CHB had now refused to regularise such rooms citing the notification.

Nirmal Datt, one of the members of the committee, set up by the Administration before the parliamentary elections, said the committee had recommended that relaxations would be allowed subject to the condition that alternative arrangements shall be made by the allottees to ensure light and ventilation in the existing structures as well as the new structures through provision of additional windows/ventilation/skylights or through mechanical means. He said the Administration had claimed that the need-based committee had allowed a 150 sq ft room by “stretching bylaws”. However, he was shocked when he went to the board office to get his construction regularised. He said CHB officials refused to regularise the room saying that the benefit could only be given if the room was constructed as per the bylaws.

He said officials of the Architecture Department were also members of the committee and they had signed the recommendations. Datt questioned why the same office again introduced bylaws in the notification, snatching the concession and negating the work of the need-based committee to a large extent. He said residents had constructed rooms as per their requirement. A majority of these did not meet the building bylaws criteria. The move had negated the much-touted concession, which was supposed to help 5,000 households. He said he had raised the issue with officials of the CHB and Kirron Kher, MP.