By IANS
Bangalore : India’s IT hub has become a land grabbers’ paradise, with around 45,000 acres worth Rs.500 billion ($12.6 billion) at market rates illegally occupied in and around the city, a survey by lawmakers shows.
Bangalore is also competing with other Indian cities over blatant violation of building laws.
The authorities’ move to legalise violation by levying a hefty fine on violators has led to a storm of protests from political parties and associations of residents.
The land grabbers include religious figures, politicians, bureaucrats and realtors, the committee of legislators that looked into the illegal occupation of government land in and around Bangalore says in its report.
Only the family of former Congress chief minister R. Gundu Rao, which also figures in the long list of land grabbers, has refuted the committee’s findings.
Others, including two well-known religious personalities, are yet to give their version of the story.
The report, running into 1,000 pages, has kicked up a minor storm with the Congress dismissing it as a witch hunt as no leader of consequence from the other two major parties, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S), figures in the list.
Committee chairperson A.T. Ramaswamy of JD-S has refuted the Congress claims and says his report is based on official documents obtained from various departments whose lands have been grabbed.
Ramaswamy, now a former legislator following the dissolution of the assembly last week, has submitted the report to Governor Rameshwar Thakur in the absence of an elected government in the state.
The lands illegally taken over by the grabbers belong to departments of revenue, forest, minor irrigation, health, animal husbandry, transport, Bangalore Development Authority, Karnataka Industrial Areas Development Board, Bangalore City Corp, Karnataka Housing Board, Wakf Board, Bangalore University and Karnataka Slum Clearance Board.
The committee has found that the grabbers had not spared even graveyards, dry lakes and tank beds.
The committee says that officials of various government departments and agencies have colluded with the land grabbers. It has recommended severe punishment to the guilty.
One of the bizarre cases of land grab identified by the committee in its interim report submitted earlier relates to an as yet unidentified person pledging a dry lakebed to a bank to raise a loan of Rs.50 million.
Since the person defaulted on loan repayment, the bank auctioned the pledged lake bet and raised Rs.76 million.
The committee found that more than 15 acres of the lakebed in Byrasandra in central Bangalore had been encroached by a realtor. The realtor fabricated documents to show possession of the area and on that basis took a loan of Rs.50 million from the Indian Overseas Bank (IOB) branch in Jayanagar here.
The lakebed had been given by the government in 1986 to the forest department to develop a tree park. The encroachment and IOB auctioning the land to recover its amount took place sometime later.
Though the committee wants to the governor to act on its report, the Congress is opposing it as mostly its leaders have been named by it.
The party also contends that since the assembly has been dissolved, the committee has ceased to exist and its chairman should not have gone ahead with finalising the report and submitting it to the governor.
Ramaswamy justifies his action saying the report had been finalised by the time assembly was dissolved. Since there was no elected government, he can only submit the report to the governor, he told reporters during the weekend.
Apart from massive land grabbing, the city and surrounding areas have seen widespread violation of building rules and regulations.
The JD-S and BJP coalition government enacted a law in September 2006 to regularise unauthorised constructions not only in Bangalore but also across the entire state by colleting a fine from the violators.
The law came into effect from September and the regularisation process is to start from Dec 14.
The Congress, the Left parties, some trade bodies and various residents’ association have launched protests against the implementation of the Karnataka Town and Country Planning (Regularisation of Unauthorised Development or Constructions) Rules 2007.
They argue that the levy is unscientific and a burden on small residential properties.
The law says that 50 percent of the funds collected by urban bodies for regularisation will be utilised for the development of parks and open spaces and the remaining 50 percent for infrastructure, civic amenities, lighting, drinking water, drainage system and such other facilities.
“The fee prescribed for regularisation is reasonable,” says S. Subramanya, head of the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (Greater Bangalore City Corp).
He has been telling the media and representatives of trade bodies and residents that since the regularisation fee will be utilised to develop infrastructure, there is no justification to oppose the government decision.
However those opposing the law remain unconvinced.