Delhi govt asks Centre to amend notice on illegal colonies
A similar move had been proposed by the then Sheila Dikshit dispensation, but rejected by the then UPA government.
New Delhi: Arguing that it was difficult to regularise over 1,600 unauthorised colonies in the city as per the existing guidelines, the Delhi government has sought amendments in the Centre’s 2008 notification. Urban development minister Satyendra Jain on Thursday said the Delhi government wants 1,639 unauthorised colonies to be regularised on “as is, where is” basis. A similar move had been proposed by the then Sheila Dikshit dispensation, but rejected by the then UPA government.
“All political parties are on the same page that the 1,639 colonies need to be regularised, but why is the delay on the part of the Centre? The Centre wants more details on our proposal to legalise these colonies, leading to the delay. The Delhi government has provided all details available with it,” Mr Jain said.
The development comes a day after the Delhi high court told the Centre to take an “in-principle decision” on the government’s proposal to regularise unauthorised colonies. The court has given the Central government four weeks time to take a decision on the matter.
Mr Jain said that in 2008, the decision had been taken together by the Centre and the state government. The AAP government demands the Centre to give in-principle agreement and thereafter, the city administration will distribute the certificates within 24 hours, he added.
Regularisation of unauthorised colonies is a long-pending issue. The then UPA government had distributed provisional certificates to over 1,200 colonies ahead of the 2008 Delhi Assembly elections.
The conditions laid in the 2008 notification — in terms of the colony boundaries, covered and open areas, cost of land in colonies that had come up on government land and development charges — emerged to as bottlenecks in the regularisation process.
Ahead of the 2013 Assembly elections, the Sheila Dikshit government had proposed the Centre to amend the policy and grant permission to regularise the colonies. However, the then UPA government had rejected the move.
Both the Centre — during President’s Rule — and the Aam Aadmi Party government gradually increased the cut-off date for including the colonies in the regularisation list to January 1, 2015.