Regularisation of illegal colonies gets L-G nod, but easier said than done

Lieutenant-Governor Tejendra Khanna late on Tuesday night approved the regularisation of unauthorised colonies in Delhi.

However, going by the Union government's last amendment of the guidelines for regularising colonies in June this year, unauthorised colonies may not be regularised before the cost of land, on which the settlements are located, is recovered.

According to Clause 5.4 of the amended guidelines from the Union Urban Development Ministry "...GNCTD (Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi) will issue orders regularising the colony as per the boundaries fixed after the recovery of cost of land on behalf of land owning agency in respect of colonies on public land.."

When asked, Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit only said, "The issue will be discussed in the Delhi Assembly on Wednesday but this is not a process that will be completed overnight."

Parliamentary Secretary Mukesh Sharma told Newsline on Tuesday, "The L-G has approved the list of 917 colonies that the Delhi government had sent to his office recently. The issue will be discussed in the Delhi Assembly on Wednesday."

A senior government official said the clause would cause some ambiguity, particularly for those colonies that have been constructed on government land.

"This clause from the amended guidelines states that a colony can be notified only after the land owning agency — Delhi government, Delhi Development Authority or the Land and Development Office — recovers the cost of the land from that particular Residents' Welfare Association (RWA)," the official said.

He said this complication would not arise for those colonies on private land.

Incidentally, of the list of 917 colonies that the L-G approved, only 315 are on private land, while the remaining are on government-owned land.

A senior Congress legislator said the government had begun the process to start collecting money from those RWAs that are on government land. "This is not a simple issue, the Delhi government has set the boundaries for the colonies and now the colonies would have to pay the cost of that land before regularisation," he said.

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