Merged villages face hurdles as development comes to halt

Karimnagar : Mayor Y Sunil Rao appealed to Chief Minister Anumula Revanth Reddy to offer relaxation/exemption of the condition laid down in the TSbPASS Act with regard to cutoff date of registered documents for sanction of building permission within Karimnagar Municipal Corporation limits including eight merged Grama Panchayats. In a letter to the CM, he said that the Commissioner & Director of Municipal Administration, have issued orders for merging the following eight Gram Panchayats, Theegalagutta Pally, Seetharampur, Padmanagar,Algunoor,Arepally,Rekurthy,Vallam Pahad and Sadasivapally into corporation.

As per the TSbPASS Act, the cutoff date for obtaining building permission in the TSbPASS is 26th August, 2020 that is the residential plots should have been registered on or before August 26, 2020. The Grama Panchayats, which have been merged into corporation have agricultural and prior to merging into Corporation, there were no registered plots, and the permissions were obtained from Grama Panchayats only on the basis of Patta, and also constructed buildings unauthorisedly.

There were no transactions of sub-division of land, registration of plots and selling and buying activity. After merging into Municipal Corporation, Karimnagar, people of all the erstwhile Grama Panchayats are facing problems in getting building permissions, and hence, they are preferring to go for unauthorised/ illegal constructions as the plots are of unauthorisedly sub-divided and without registration prior to cut off date. Further, they are also unable to buy and sell their agricultural lands as residential plots for their personal needs, such as children’s marriage and education purposes, etc., as such plots cannot get building permissions, Sunil Rao said.

He further said that since the plots are not registered prior to cutoff date within the Municipal Corporation limits including merged grama panchayats, there are no buying and selling activities of land, therefore, the development is concentrated in the town itself, and thereby increasing the density of the town further, which is already most densely populated city in Telangana State with a density of 11,114 persons per sq. Km.

Therefore relaxing or exempting the condition laid down in the TSbPASS Act with regard to cut off date of Registered Documents, i.e. August 26, 2020 for sanction of building permissions within the Municipal Corporation limits including merged Grama Panchayats would encourage the residents to get building permission and thereby unauthorised constructions can be discouraged, and development will be decentralised all sides of the Municipal Corporation, Sunil Rao noted.