UP govt cancells licence of two Hi-tech cities

Lucknow, July 12 (UNI) The Uttar Pradesh government has cancelled licence of two hi-tech cities of private developers at-- Lucknow and Dadri-- following lapses and has decided to ban advertisement by the developers to attract the customers before start of construction work.

The state cabinet today accepted the recommendation of the committee headed by Industrial Development Commissioner(IDC) for cancellation of the hi-tech cities of two developers along with several other recommendations including scrapping of the present hi-tech policy.

The cancelled developer in Lucknow is said to be from the Ansal Group while the officials are tight lipped on the name of the developer at Dadri.

State cabinet secretary Shashank Shekhar Singh told here that the committee made its recommendation after reviewing this policy and indicated several flaws in it.

The committee pointed out that the present policy did not hage financing plan to attract investment because the seriousness of the developer could not be gauged.

Mr Singh said the committee also said told the developers prelaunch their schemes and collect money from the people with acquiring the land. This collection is totally insecure thus refund of this money becomes doubtful.

The committee has further said the Housing Board should not exempt the notified land from acquisition as it was not proper and because of it several development schemes of the Government Authorities will flop.

The cabinet secretary said, the committee has also objected that there was no process of evaluation of the proposals of the developers under the present policy. It has therefore emphasised the need to fix minimum qualifying marks for each parameter. It has also been recommended that the development should be penalised for delay in development work as the present policy had no such provision.

The cabinet while accepting the recommendations of the committee has directed the Housing Department to remove all the bottlenecks of the policy and submit a fresh proposal.

However officials assured that the government will ensure refund of all payment made by any customer to avail flats or plots in the cancelled hi-tech cities.

UNI