BANGALORE: Property prices in urban and semi-urban areas across the state are set to spike with the government allowing registration of sites purchased in irregular layouts within gram panchayat limits.
The government has facilitated this through the issue of 11B khatas, which enable people to register the sites purchased in such layouts.
Civic experts have termed the government’s move as thoughtless as it could lead to unplanned growth besides leading to an escalation in real estate prices.
T M Vijay Bhaskar, principal secretary of the Rural Development and Panchayat Raj Department, said, “We will be issuing 11B khatas in gram panchayat limits on the lines of B khatas issued by the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike and other government agencies in the cities to facilitate the registration of the sites purchased in revenue layouts.”
He said these khatas would help buyers register their sites in the layouts that are formed without obtaining the necessary conversions.
The government has also issued circulars to all the gram panchayats to start issuing computerised khatas to regularised properties in gram panchayats.
Infrastructure expert Ashwin Mahesh criticised the decision saying that by issuing such khatas and introducing schemes like Akrama Sakrama, the government is fostering “a culture of illegality.”
People who buy properties in illegal layouts will now assume their properties will be regularised later. “This will also enable anyone to develop layouts according to their convenience without obtaining permissions and, thereby, defeat the purpose of establishing planning authorities,” he said.
M N Srihari, an urban affairs analyst, feared that unplanned layouts will now mushroom in peri-urban areas as people who cannot buy sites in the city limits will invest there. “That would make it difficult for the municipal bodies to provide good roads, drinking water facilities, communication lines and other amenities to those areas when they are merged with the urban areas,” he said. Under the current rules, one has to obtain conversion from the GPs and the deputy commissioner to form a layout in GP areas, and khatas were being issued for only such layouts.
Sites purchased in irregular layouts were being registered as land. Now the 11B khatas will enable one to register these sites. Some of the GPs used to frequently stop issuing khatas and people were unable to register their properties as sub-registrars do not register a property without the relevant khata.
IG of Registrations and Commissioner of Stamps Adoni Syed Saleem said, “Registrations were affected as gram panchayats were not issuing the khatas. They were planning to start issuing computerised khatas. If they start issuing the khatas, the number of registrations is likely to increase.”