About 5,000 site allottees at Bangalore Development Authority’s Nadaprabhu Kempegowda Layout are in a fix over the stringent condition put forth by the authority — plot owners will be penalised if they don’t built a house on their sites within five years of allotment.
While BDA is talking tough, site owners are blaming it for not providing basic civic infrastructure to ensure construction activity in the layout. The allottees have written to BDA to extend the deadline by another five years.
However, officials said nothing is in the authority’s hands as the matter must be decided by the government. Sources in BDA said the five-year deadline given during registration of property came to an end in early 2020, and the civic body is well within its right to penalise defaulting site owners. “The decision to penalise site owners was taken at the government level. The board authorised officials to penalise those who have violated the clause invoked at the time of property registration. If the rule must be changed, a proposal must come from the government and there is nothing the BDA can do,” said a senior BDA official.
Another BDA engineer said, “The government had taken this decision to curb real estate agent activity in the layout’s vicinity. We could have considered their pleas if any of the site allottees had even started construction work, but no one has.”
However, Surya Kiran, spokesperson of NPKL Open Forum, an association of the site allottees, said these opinions of engineers and officials are fine on paper. “If you look at the ground reality, the layout has several other problems. Probably, BDA doesn’t have the latest information. More than 20 site owners have applied to BDA for sanction of building plan. Also, a retired employee invested all his savings and already built a house in Sector G, IV Block. Yet, there are no facilities, including electricity and sewage network.”
The allottees revealed that even though the government had approved a few works, including power facility, BDA is yet to clear pending arrears of contractors. “The contractors are hell-bent on getting their dues cleared. But the file pertaining to clearance of bills is shuttling between BDA and the government. If the government refuses to clear the bills, work is unlikely to happen,” said another allottee.
Repeated calls to BDA commissioner Rajesh Gowda seeking clarity on the pending bills went unanswered.
