Punjab: Details of illegal constructions, action taken by ULBs sought

Tribune News Service

Rajmeet Singh

Chandigarh, January 18

Wary of being caught on the wrong foot, the Local Government Department wants to document all illegal constructions and action taken in all urban local bodies (ULBs).

Citing orders of the Punjab and Haryana High Court from time to time, the Department has sought complete details of illegal constructions, including number of challans issued to the violators by January 30.

All Municipal Corporation Commissioners, ADCs (Urban Development), Executive Officer, and Improvements Trust officials have been asked to update information on the stage of the construction, and whether the violation is compoundable or not in digital format on the challan management system (CMS).

The instructions have been issued even as the government is yet to come up with a revised one-time settlement (OTS) policy for non-compoundable building violations

During the previous Congress government, the department had prepared a draft policy, “The Punjab one-time voluntary disclosure and settlement of building constructed in violations of the building bylaws policy - 2021”, after incorporating suggestions of all stakeholders, including municipal corporations, councils, nagar panchayats and improvement trusts.

The earlier policy was conceptualised and notified during the tenure of former Local Bodies Minister Navjot Singh Sidhu, but was kept in abeyance after Brahm Mohindra took charge in June 2019. Officials were asked to revise the policy that aimed at giving an opportunity to the violators to get their unauthorised residential and commercial units regularised by paying certain amount of composition fee.

Discussions were held to classify the ULB in different zones for the purpose of calculating the compounding fee and plan out community parking lots. “The part of the construction that could not be compounded had to be removed. But the final policy never came. In a majority of cases, people had made drastic changes in approved building plans and it was not possible to regularise them,” said an official.

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