Upscale unauthorised colony Sainik Farms, home to influential people, is set to lose its illegal tag with the Delhi government deciding to regularise it along with over other 1,600 unplanned colonies.
Along with Sainik Farms, the regularisation bonanza of the Arvind Kejriwal government will also benefit Anant Ram Dairy and Mahendru Enclave that are also home to influential residents, which include retired judges, bureaucrats, policemen, politicians and lawyers.
“A decision has been taken by the Delhi Cabinet to save the unauthorised colonies from demolition and to start development work,” said an official.
The government has also decided to allow the spending of MLA funds in all the over 1,600 unauthorised colonies, he said.
The previous Congress government had removed Sainik Farms near Saket in south Delhi, Anant Ram Dairy near R K Puram in south Delhi and Mahendru Enclave near Gujrawalan Enclave in north Delhi from the list of 895 colonies which it took up with the central government for regularisation.
“The AAP government is not going to differentiate among unauthorised colonies. All of them which came up before January 1, 2015 would be treated equally and regularised under the new guidelines,” he said.
The relief for the three affluent unauthorised colonies comes at a time when an NGO has approached the Delhi High Court over alleged illegal constructions in Sainik Farm.
The petition filed by the NGO alleged that over 500 fresh illegal constructions having huge structures have come up in the area.
It claimed the court-directed curbs of 2007 on the entry of construction material into these colonies had failed to prevent vertical growth, and thousands of tonnes of building material are being taken there despite the court's 2007 order prohibiting it.
The Delhi government has now taken an in-principle decision not to send demolition squads to these colonies, just as it has shielded other unauthorised colonies from bulldozers.
Officials said the Urban Development department and officials of the central government will now have to propose a methodology for the recovery of various charges and penalties from unauthorised colonies.
“A draft is ready on the rates to be collected from residents of different unauthorised colonies,” he said.
The Delhi government has already started the work of preparing the boundaries of unauthorised colonies and map the entire area using satellite imagery. Once the process is completed, the government will send the boundary details of these colonies for layout plan to corporations.