Bhakti V Hegde / DHNS

Mangalore, Sep 19: The three month-long drive for regularization of unauthorized developments and constructions commenced on September 15. Though there are huge numbers of violators waiting to make use of the opportunity, the Mangalore Urban Development Authority (MUDA) and Mangalore City Corporation (MCC) have not yet received the applications forms that have to be issued by the Department of Urban Development, Bangalore for the same.

Speaking to Deccan Herald, MCC Town Planning Officer Balakrishne Gowda said “large number of people did come to MCC over last four days wanting to regularise their structures. But they had to return as there were no applications forms available.”

On the other hand Mangalore Urban Development Authority (MUDA) had only a couple of people enquiring about the regularization process who submitted a hand written application.

However, MUDA Commissioner M K Gadkar said “the hand written applications cannot be considered as authentic document as the application has to be in a prescribed format.”

He said that he had contacted the Department of Urban Development Bangalore, where the authorities said that it was delayed in the wake of local body elections and assured to send the applications within three days.

While the drive could not take off on the said date, Deputy Commissioner M Maheshwar Rao when questioned about the same said that he did not have much information on the same as he could not persue the matter due to the pressure of local body elections.

He said that he would be able to persue the matter only after elections. There is a District Urban Development Cell located in the Deputy Commissioner’s officers but the officers there opted to settle on evasive answers on the matter, passing the buck to MCC and MUDA.

Citizens’ Forum for Mangalore Development Joint coordinator Vidya Dinker said “the documents procured from state government under RTI clearly prove that there has no written appeal from any individual house owners or builders, organisations or elected representatives for this regularization process. With this it is quite clear that there are vested interest at work.”

She questions as to why 76 FFF of Karnataka Town and Country Planning Act, 321-B of Karnataka Municipal Corporation Act and 187-B of Karnataka Municipalities Act that talk of “penalty against jurisdictional officers failing to prevent unauthorised deviations or constructions”, has no place in the rule.

The very fact that it has been excluded from the rules that have just come into force (September 15) only points at the builders and government’s desire to pertuate the season of regularizations of violations by not framing rule for the section that can be the prime deterrent to future violations.

While the violators of National Building Code, Mangalore City Building Bylaws and the MUDA Zoning Regulations will have to wait for some more days to regularise their buildings and developments, at the same time, citizens will have to certainly ponder on the future of Mangalore if the ‘Akrama Sakrama’ tale continues.