Andhra Pradesh amends norms to regularise individual plots

Vijayawada: The Andhra Pradesh government has amended rules to regularise individual plots in unauthorised layouts in the state. This will help 25,876 people to regularise their plots. Many people, unaware of this drawback, had bought plots and got into trouble. The regularisation of individual plots in unauthorised layouts was possible only after the layouts were regularised earlier. However, the government has now decided to regularise individual plots by directly relaxing the rules.

The government issued a circular amending the regularisation rules. It stated that in spite of continuous persuasion, monitoring and instructions being issued from time to time, out of the total 10,630 identified unauthorised layouts, only 26,28 layouts prepared by Urban Local Bodies (ULB) and Urban Development Authorities (UDA) and only 697 in principle patterns layouts were approved by the competent authorities. The disposal of the in principle patterns was not progressing as expected due to which the processing of regularisations of individual plots was getting delayed. The director of town and country planning issued orders permitting ULBs and UDAs to process individual LRS applications irrespective of approval of layouts.

According to reports, as many as 26,956 applications were received for regularisation in 13 districts of AP in which only 628 were regularised and 11 were rejected. Notices were issued to 178 and 263 applications did not submit required documents and majority of applications were stuck due to absence of regularisation to their layouts.

The norms of mandatory regularisation of unauthorised layouts turned out to be a big hurdle for people who wished to regularise their individual plots. The buyers lamented that developers and promoters did not complete the layout regularisation processes and majority of buyers are unaware about the same. They welcomed the amendment of regulations paving way to regularise individual plots. They said that with regularisation of individual plots, they will get the opportunity to build a house on their land and take bank loans.

State Town and Country Planning Department director V. Ramudu stated that the government has amended the rules to benefit those who were facing difficulties by buying lands in unauthorised layouts. He said that realtors are also required to regulate the entire layout and the government would initiate measures for regularisation of unauthorised layouts.