UT yet to define ‘paying guest’,but crackdown still on

The administration had proposed to make changes in the existing rules for running PG accommodation in city and was to incorporate the definition of a paying guest.Despite buying time,the Estate Office seems to be doing very little as far as clearing the air about the paying guests definition is concerned.

Deputy Commissioner Brijendra Singh said,“There is no confusion as far as a tenant and a paying guest is concerned. But we are still in the process of defining a paying guest”. However,in the absence of any deadline fixed,the matter hangs in balance both for the administration and the house owners.

It all started in June this year when the UT Estate Office cracked its whip against PG accommodations mushrooming in the city,especially in Sector 11,10,15,35,36,37. As most of these PGs were not registered with the UT Estate Office,they were handed over misuse and violations notices.

In fact,the EO office also sealed a PG accommodation in Sector 35 on the ground that the owner was running an illegal PG and had also violated numerous building byelaws.

However,this triggered a debate between those running these paying guests accommodations in the city and the UT Estate Office with the former raising questions over the sealing act in the absence of any clear definition of a Paying Guest Accommodation. While the EO officials were following a thumb rule to define a PG accommodation that those who were providing food to the occupants are running PGs. However,in many cases it was found that the occupants,mostly students of local colleges and tutorials,educational academies,were eating food outside and were not provided by the house owner.

Later,to prove their point, owners started producing rent deeds to the EO claiming that their paying guests were tenants.

Recently,the Punjab and Haryana High Court had directed the UT Administration to look into the representation of Jaspinder Singh,a resident of Sector 35,in accordance with law,wherein it was pointed out that there were a large number of unauthorised PGs in Sector 35,Chandigarh.

Following the development,the department even got a survey done recently in Sector 35 and had issued over 120 notices to the owners of residential buildings which were illegally being used as PGs. In fact,as per UT Estate Office’s own records,there are only five PGs in the city registered with the department and over 600 illegal PGs were running right under the department’s nose.