Illegal colonies to be regularised in MP

Bhopal, June 17 (UNI) The Madhya Pradesh government today decided to immediately initiate action for regularising illegal urban colonies that came up prior to January 2008.

The state Cabinet, at a meeting chaired by Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan here, was informed that there are 2,024 such colonies considered illegal due to legal flaws and procedural violation, an official release said.

Although legislation has been framed to regularise illegal colonies, only about 200 were regularised in the past five years due to procedural complications.

A five-member committee was constituted to give suggestions with regard to regularisation. In the light of the Chief Minister's directive and a meeting of senior secretaries held under the Chief Secretary's chairmanship, action has been proposed for simplifying the regularisation procedure.

Original laws would be amended. In case license is given for a city to a coloniser, he or she would require no separate licenses for each colony to be developed by him or her in the same city.

For each colony or project, permission may be obtained by duly submitting applications. The applications for coloniser license and colony permission would be rationalised.

In order to check growth of illegal colonies there is need to make existing legal provisions more stringent. The fine for constructing an illegal colony would be increased from Rs 10,000 to a minimum Rs 10 lakh and maximum Rs 50 lakh with a year's imprisonment.

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