UP government dusts up norms on illegal colonies, orders fresh survey

LUCKNOW: Grappling with the rapid growth of unauthorised colonies, the Uttar Pradesh government has drafted an “action plan” to deal with the problem.

In a missive, principal secretary, housing, Nitin Ramesh Gokarn has directed the development authorities across the state to prepare a fresh (Google) map of the vast stretches of unauthorised growth with the help of Remote Sensing Application Centre (RSAC) and submit a report in 15 days.

“The maps have to be signed by respective competent authorities and a copy each has to be sent to the state government, commissioners and chief town and country planner,” says the letter.

May 1, 2016 has been set as the

› The maps have to be signed by respective competent authorities and a copy each has to be sent to the state government, commissioners and chief town and country planner

NITIN RAMESH GOKARN, principal secretary, housing

cut-off date for these colonies and the action plan includes dividing unauthorised areas into zones under the in-charge of a nodal/ enforcement officer, who would be held accountable if he fails to check illegal growth in future. “The assessment of these officers will be done on the basis of their performance on checking this illegal growth and the same will be mentioned in their annual appraisal report,” says the order.

Gokarn’s missive is being viewed by the officials as a follow up of the directives issued in April by the then chief secretary Rajive Kumar in which he had directed the UP housing and town planning department to get policy guidelines related to regularisation of unauthorised colonies. RK Shukla, a resident of Ambika Vihar, who has been fighting to get his colony regularised for several years, says: “In 2012, the Allahabad high court had directed the state government to finalise the guidelines related to these unauthorised colonies.”

At the last count in 2012, UP had 2,441 colonies in various cities with Meerut topping the list with 259 unauthorised colonies followed by Lucknow with 243. Unofficially, however, Lucknow is said to have over 400 illegal colonies. Other cities having more than 200 illegal colonies include Agra (234), Mathura Vrindavan (220) and Ghaziabad (208). These are followed by Varanasi (199), Kanpur and Bareilly (199 each) and Saharanpur (161).

In July last year, the state government had given a statement in the UP Assembly that it was considering legalisation of illegal colonies and provide them basic civic amenities . However, Gokarn said after regularisation it would become easier for residents of these colonies to avail loans from various banks to improve and strengthen amenities like roads, water and sewerage disposal system.