Govt to implement one-time settlement policy soon

Sukhmeet Bhasin
Tribune News Service
Bathinda, October 12

The state government is set to implement one-time settlement policy in the state soon. Under the policy, instead of demolishing buildings, money would be taken from the building owners to regularise these.

The policy will benefit many commercial and residential buildings that have come up across the city in the past many years.

The state government had sent a draft of the policy to the municipal corporations in January and sought objections on it.

After receiving objections and making changes, it is expected that the policy will be approved in the upcoming Punjab cabinet meeting.

It will help in generating revenue for the debt-ridden municipal corporations, which can start developmental works lying stalled due to fund crunch. Side by side as the policy may lead to resentment among people, who had got their buildings built by illegal means, in alleged connivance of officials, now they will have to spend money on getting these regularised.

Even the Punjab Government’s decision to regularise all illegal colonies that have been developed before March 19 will benefit around 117 colonies, 10,000 plot holders and building owners in Bathinda and Mansa districts.

Most of these buildings come under the Bathinda Development Authority (BDA). This notification regarding illegal colonies has been approved by the state government in the recently held state cabinet meeting.

The salient features of this policy are that unauthorised colonies developed before March 19 would be regularised and the composition fee or other charges paid earlier under the previous policies would be adjusted.

Further, funds received from the regularisation of a colony would be used for providing basic infrastructure for that particular colony.

The Punjab Government has removed the clause that only after the regularisation of the colony, buildings and plots would be regularised. From now, a colony may regularised or not, but plots or building owners can do that for which they will get a time of four months and have to pay a fixed price.

There are many illegal buildings in the city which have come with deviation from the map or without map approval in the city.

Even the working of the MCB has also remained controversial as in the past few years, the building wing hasn’t demolished many illegal buildings despite issuing notices.

Though MC officials undertake drives to crack whip on the owners of illegal buildings, such campaigns are mere an eyewash as the action remains confined to damaging a part of the structure. Days after such drives, the violators get the destroyed portion of their structures reconstructed.