HMDA in a fix as LRS applicants delay payments

​Hyderabad: It seems that the Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Authority’s (HMDA) Layout Regularisation Scheme (LRS) is facing payments blues. Nearly fifty percent of applicants have failed to pay LRS fee amounts to get the final proceedings, according to sources. Despite reminders from the metropolitan body, applicants are stretching the process for a few weeks beyond the stipulated date given to them.

Also, the decision of the State government to extend LRS deadline date repeatedly has led people to be not in a hurry to complete the formalities at the earliest. From December 2017, the deadline was extended five times each month with the fresh deadline set to expire on May 31.

It may be mentioned here that metropolitan body received 1.75 lakh applications for regularisation of plots in its limits spread over 7,257 km in seven districts. After intense scrutiny including checking of title, site inspection, seeking additional documents wherever required, raising payment demand and sending it to the concerned applicant, the HMDA considered 97,000 applications for clearance. 

Of this, 75,000 applications were issued final proceedings after full payments were made. However, another 22,000 applications were also cleared for issuing LRS certificates. Surprisingly, the concerned applicants are yet to make the complete payment to get final proceedings. It may be mentioned here that the HMDA had given one-month time for applicants to make the full payment. 

According to HMDA officials, this pattern of delayed payments was seen in nearly 50 percent of applicants. The final fee amount was fixed in the range of Rs 75,000 to Rs 1.5 lakh for a majority of applicants. All the applicants were charged Rs 10,000 initially for submitting the application and this would be deducted from the final LRS amount decided by authorities for each application.

So far, the metropolitan body garnered nearly Rs 670 crores from the scheme. It rejected or put on hold another sixty thousand applications on grounds that the lands were falling in water bed or master plan route or either coming in the government land and assigned land categories.