Poor response to LRS: Government extends last date for payment of fee till April 30

The State government’s plans to fill up its coffers through the LRS failed to yield desired results with not many coming forward to avail of the offer before the last date of March 31

Hyderabad: With poor response from the public to its Land Regularisation Scheme (LRS), the State government has decided to extend the date for payment of the LRS fee and charges with a rebate of 25 per cent up to April 30. Orders to this effect were issued on Wednesday.

In February this year, the Congress government had announced regularisation of plots in unapproved and illegal layouts across the State. Accordingly, orders were issued to clear applications under LRS 2020, where around 16 lakh applications are pending for approval. Besides imposing regularisation fee and other charges as per the LRS 2020, the government also offered 25 per cent discount on the same.

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However, the State government’s plans to fill up its coffers through the LRS failed to yield desired results with not many coming forward to avail of the offer before the last date of March 31. The LRS scheme was made applicable for the nearly 25 lakh applications that were filed between August 31 and October 31, 2020. Accordingly, the government expected that LRS applications processing could generate a revenue of about Rs.10,000 crore. On the contrary, hardly Rs.1,500 crore was generated as only about 4.36 lakh applicants availed the 25 percent rebate offered by the government.

Applicants had the option of paying the pro-rata open space charges at the time of obtaining the building permission. The open space charges were calculated at 14 per cent of market value. To this effect, the government had issued GOMs 28.

On the lukewarm response from applicants, officials pointed out that apart from lack of awareness, the orders were not applicable in a few districts where the MLC elections model code of conduct was in vogue. Further, there were many technical glitches in intimations sent to the applicants. In a few municipal corporation, especially GHMC area, most applications were still pending at L1 stage.

More importantly, applicants preferred to pay regularization charges while obtaining the building permission rather paying now. Additionally, in many cases, though the layouts were clear from any irregularities, proceedings were not issued citing prohibitory issues for a few survey numbers, officials explained.

“In the last 10 days, there was some response but it was hardly up to our expectations,” a senior official from the MA&UD department said.

In 2015, the past government had offered LRS for land owners and many had even paid Rs.10,000 towards the application fee. The applicants were directed to produce link documents and other certificates for regularization. As a result, not many applicants got proceedings and the entire exercise was left midway. Considering the current situation, it would help the government to generate more revenue, if the old applications were also processed.

However, officials said 90 percent of those applications were processed and proceedings were issued accordingly. Applicants were given time till December 31, 2020 and the balance 10 percent were rejected for different reasons. An appeal was made from Warangal to consider the processing of old applications but the government refused the appeal, they informed.