After enhancing land values and registration charges for property registrations, the Telangana government has shifted its focus on Layout Regularisation Scheme (LRS).
The drive, in which open plots in illegal layouts across the state will be regularised, is likely to fetch between Rs 2,000 and Rs 3,000 crore, subject to final outcome in a case in Supreme Court. The state has already received Rs 250 crore towards application fee.
The government had announced LRS on September 1, 2020, and accepted applications till October 31, 2020. There was a overwhelming response for the scheme with 25 lakh applying for regularising their plots as government had stopped registration of open plots in unapproved layouts. Individual plot owners were asked to pay Rs 1,000 as initial fee, while layout developers were asked to pay Rs 10,000 along with the applications.
After receiving the applications, the government could not go ahead with regularisation due to a case in high court. Now, the matter is before the Supreme Court.
Nine months after receiving the applications, municipal administration department principal secretary Arvind Kumar issued a memo on Tuesday directing officials of municipal administration and panchayat raj departments to process the applications in a time-bound manner by issuing certain guidelines. “Government will compile the information and submit it to court,” municipal administration department principal secretary Arvind Kumar told.
For the purpose, preliminary processing would have two stages. “In stage I, all LRS applications received by gram panchayats and civic bodies should be grouped into different clusters i.e., village, survey number wise, locality and colony wise and kept ready for site inspections. In the Stage II, each cluster should be inspected by a team constituted by the district collector with officials of revenue, irrigation, panchayat and local town planning staff and upload their remarks online,” the municipal administration department memo stated.
The entire exercise should be completed within 15 days, the principal secretary said.
