The Hubballi-Dharwad Urban Development Authority (HDUDA) is set to launch a drive to demolish illegal layouts in Hubballi and Dharwad from Friday.
The HDUDA has already demolished hundreds of illegal layouts in the first and second phase. Friday is the start of the third phase.
Nagesh Kalburagi, the president of HDUDA, told TOI that there were many illegal layouts in the twin cities and it was also causing a huge loss to the HDUDA in terms of revenue. “I have started targeting illegal layouts after taking charge as the president. In the last six months, we have launched a drive in two phases and we have demolished 177 illegal layouts in Hubbballi and Dharwad. Now, we are prepared to launch the third phase of demolition of illegal layouts from January 28,” he said. “Our team of officials will also seek police help to prevent any untoward incident during the demolition and I will personally monitor the drive,” he added.
“We have also identified ninety illegal layouts which will be demolished in the third phase. Of them, 36 layouts are built on 104 acres in Dharwad. We will first launch a drive in Dharwad and then start in Hubballi. In the next one week, we will remove all 90 illegal layouts,” he said.
“We have served notices to all the owners concerned but they did not reply to our notices and have not come forward to convert their illegal layouts to legal by following norms laid down by the government. Hence, we will start the demolition of such layouts,” he said.
He pointed out that most of the owners developed illegal layouts on 3-12 acres without following government norms. “According to government norms, the landowner should earmark 10% of land for garden, 5% for CA (civic amenties), and 30% for construction of roads. Besides, they have to convert their land into NA (non-agriculture) sites by paying fees and must take layout approval from the HDUDA and get the plots registered in the sub-registrar’s office by paying a fee fixed by the government. For all these works, the landowner has to spend at least Rs 6-7 lakh per acre to build layouts legally, but most of the owners have thrown all these norms to the wind and started constructing illegal layouts. After we started the demolition drive, the number of applications for land approval has increased now,” he said.
“On Friday, we will demolish some illegal layouts at Hosayallapur. We will remove electric poles, water pipelines, and other infrastructure developed in illegal layouts during the drive,” he added.
