Govt to bring one-time settlement scheme for marriage palaces

housing and urban development department has proposed a One-Time Settlement (OTS) scheme to regularise marriage palaces and banquet halls in the state.

There are at least 1,200 such buildings that are under the jurisdiction of the housing department, the majority of these are hubs of weddings and social gatherings, but were built without paying Change of Land Use (CLU) charges. The department wants to recover these.

“I have asked the housing department to come up with an OTS scheme (for marriage palaces and banquet halls). We have asked owners for suggestions and will hold a joint meeting to know their grievances before giving them the opportunity to pay up the charges they are liable for,” said housing and urban development minister Tript Rajinder Singh Bajwa.

Under the policy in place, CLU charges between ₹5 lakh and ₹50 lakh per acre are imposed on banquet halls and marriage palaces.

Those built before 2007 are exempted from the mandatory stipulation of having parking equal to the hall size.

After the policy was made, the housing department gave a deadline of October 30, 2018, seeking applications from banquet hall owners for regularisation. It was decided to process these cases by December 31, 2018. The government received applications from 1,200 banquet halls and 300 applications were processed.

In September, the housing department started taking action against the defaulting banquet halls, owners of which have failed to pay up the CLU charges.

SS Sidhu, the president of the Banquet Halls and Marriage Palaces Owners Association, told HT that their industry attracted a CLU that was even higher than hotels despite the fact that hotels did a variety of businesses and that too, the year-round.

“Our business is seasonal and we organise parties only, they why are we forced to pay more?,” he said.

He added, “The average size of a marriage palace is 6-8 acres. So, at the higher end of the scale, the CLU charge is between ₹3 crore and ₹4 crore. This needs to be rationalised.” He went on to add that there were 500-600 banquet halls operating illegally, but the government had failed to act against these.

“There are some issues which need to settled such as setting up of a sewage treatment plant, a solar water heating system and the subsoil water recharge system. This is not practical for the work we do,” he complained. He added that other agencies like the Pollution Control Board and the Excise department also supervised their functioning.