Deccan Chronicle      03.01.2011

GHMC won’t raze illegal buildings

an. 2: The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation may well decide not to bulldoze unauthorised buildings that have not been ‘regularised’ under the Building Penalisation Sch-eme that ended on December 31, 2010.

Instead, the civic body wants to fill its empty coffers by levying heavy penalties on the buildings that are illegal or have flouted building rules. It thus hopes to raise more than Rs 50 crore on over 30,000 applications that are pending under the BPS.

Another 40,000 applications were deemed ineligible for the BPS by GHMC officials as the buildings had come up within the Full Tank levels of water bodies, or on Wakf, endowment, government, ceiling, assigned or notary lands.

Those who have already availed of the BPS and got their properties regularised, have objected to the GHMC’s reluctance to demolish the properties. They say that if the properties are not demolished, the 1.32 lakh applicants who paid in all Rs 677 crore towards penalisation char-ges and got their buildings regularised within the stipulated time, will feel cheated. Besides, if the properties are not demolished, it will send a wrong message and construction of unauthorised buildings will increase.