india

Updated: Jul 24, 2019 19:07 IST

Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Wednesday urged the Centre to regularise the 1,797 unauthorised colonies in the city at the earliest without waiting for the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) to conduct a mapping exercise.

On Wednesday, the Delhi government sent a list of 12 suggestions to the Centre which had shared a draft cabinet note on regularisation of unauthorised colonies with multiple stakeholders earlier this month.

“We have accepted all the conditions of the Centre and sent them some suggestions and comments. It is now up to the Centre to consider them,” Kejriwal said.

One of the comments of the Delhi government is a request to shift the cut-off date for the exercise from January 1, 2015 to March 31, 2019.

The Delhi government has also requested that the government considers GPA and other documents (which were declared void by a 2011 order of the Supreme Court) be considered eligible for registry.

Residents will have to pay stamp duty for only the last transaction even if the ownership of a property in an unauthorised colony has transferred multiple times, Kejriwal said.

“I have learnt that the union minister, Hardeep Puri, has said that the process will be initiated in a month, following which the DDA will do a mapping exercise in another three months. I urge the Centre to not wait for the mapping exercise and start the process at the earliest. Delhi government has satellite maps which can be provided to the Centre. The DDA can invest its own time on the exercise and submit maps later,” said Kejriwal.

Elaborating on the broad roadmap of the exercise, Kejriwal said: “The Centre’s proposal suggests that the regularisation exercise will be carried out in two phases. The first phase will include the 1797 unauthorised colonies. For the second phase, the Delhi government has to see if more unauthorised colonies have emerged with time but did not make it in the list. It has to do a fair assessment of that.”

For this exercise, the Centre classified type of land under three categories - government land, farmland and private land, Kejriwal said. He further said, for registration of ownership rights, one has to pay a certain amount of land cost plus penalty for the first two categories, and only penalty for the third category.

The land cost on a per square metre basis would depend on those in planned colonies in “neighbourhood”. While the Centre suggests that the most upmarket neighbouring colony in the neighbourhood should be the benchmark, we have requested them to take the benchmark as one category below that of the poorest neighbourhood locality instead, Kejriwal said.