LRS review exposes extensive corruption

Cross-verification of Layout Regularisation Scheme applications in the GHMC and HMDA area by civic administration and urban development department has revealed that 35,000 plots in layouts can be rejected at the scrutiny level itself.

The special teams gathered records till the cutoff date of October 28, 2015, for LRS and the applications submitted till the deadline of February 28, 2016. It was found that hundreds of layouts had come up after October 28 and applicants had submitted pleas after the cut-off dates.

Following these findings, the MAUD has decided to take up largescale transfer of staff in both GHMC and HMDA soon to check corruption.

HMDA commissioner T. Chiranjeevelu said, “We have received nearly 1.3 lakh LRS applications. We verified about 30,000 pleas and 10 per cent were rejected at scrutiny level. Notices have been sent to the plot owners. We have decided to re-verify all applications following complaints against staff.”

A senior official of MAUD said, “Our verification found that the rejection rate at HMDA level is very low. Over 25 per cent of the applications are fit for rejection at the scrutiny level itself and 10 per cent face rejection during ground-level inspections.”

Mr Rama Rao has directed GHMC and HMDA officials to initiate the transfer exercise of staff to reform both the departments.