Looking back 2022 Urban Housing: Piles of applications for plot regularisation in Punjab

Rajmeet Singh

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Chandigarh, December 28

The issue of regularising lakhs of plots in illegal colonies across the state is not yet resolved.

Call it official rigmarole, lack of inter-departmental coordination or “inconsistencies” in documents being furnished by the intended beneficiaries, the pendency of the applications for the issuance of no-objection certificates (NOCs) for the regularisation of the plots has increased. This despite the fact that the state government has reduced the issuance time for NOCs to 15 working days.

Recent decisions taken by govt

• One-time bifurcation of plots, less than 500 sq metre, in unauthorised colonies regularised under the illegal colonies regularisation policy without levying any charges. It has been allowed up to 100 sq metre, if the first sale deed was executed before August 9, 1995
• Provisional certificates issued to the colonisers and individual plot holders will be changed to final regularisation certificate, upon submission of the sale deeds
• Plots in unauthorised colonies developed before March 19, 2018, will be regularised irrespective of the regularisation status of the colony
• No NOC required for registration purposes in colonies that have been issued regularisation certificates
• Waiver will be applicable in three categories, applied but not regularised, not applied or rejected and developed before March 19, 2018

Officials in the Local Government and Urban Housing – the two departments directly dealing with the NOC seekers — say that over 2 lakh NOCs have been issued by the departments so far. But they admit that some issues relating to delay in inter-departmental online processing of applications, issues like sale deeds of multiple plots done on single agreements and sale agreements done on stamp papers after March 19, 2018, but shown to have been done before the cut-off dates were behind the pendency.

They are learnt to have earned over Rs 200 crore as the regularisation fee from the NOC seekers.

After a series of meetings of the high-powered committee comprising top officials of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Local Government Department and Revenue Department, an online portal was put in place to speed up the process of issuing the NOCs. A deadline of 21 working days was fixed to complete the process to issue the NOC before bringing it down to 15 days.

In the recent instructions, the committee members, taking cognisance of pendency of applications for regularisation of authorised colonies, decided to give six months to all departments concerned to dispose of the pending applications. It had also been decided to give six-month time to colonisers and four months to individual plot holders to submit their sale deeds. The provisional certificates issued to the colonisers and individual plot holders will be changed to the final regularisation certificate, upon submission of the sale deeds.

The illegal colonies regularisation policy of 1998 mandates that all applications should be disposed of within two years from the date of demand notice and payment of the charges, but the applicants in many cases didn’t submit either the requisite charges or documents, said a senior government functionary.

Local Government Minister Dr Inderbir Singh Nijjer said it was a dynamic issue and the high-empowered committee was meeting at regular intervals to iron out the issues. He said he would visit the centres issuing the NOCs to check the ground situation.

On the other hand, the stakeholders point out that multiple issues like no training of the staff processing the applications, the online portal picking up collector rate of 2022 instead of 2018, online portal not accepting applications of plots holders, who have purchased the property after March 19, 2019, but the colonies were established before 2018, and the portal asking for verification of sale deeds already registered with Sub registrar were the main issues.

Earlier four policies were brought in to regularise illegal colonies, including three by the SAD-BJP government in 2013, 2014 and 2016 and one by the Congress in 2018, which extended the cut-off date from March 31, 2013, to March 18, 2018, and those who had not applied for regularisation under the SAD-BJP regime could apply under the 2018 policy.