Over 8,000 allottees are yet to get sites in the jinxed Arkavathy Layout even after a decade, but 137 Central and State government officials, including IAS and IPS officers, who own plots in the Metropolitan Co-operative Housing Society (MCHS) layout within Arkavathy Layout, are sitting pretty.
Neither the denotification controversy over Arkavathy Layout nor other legal disputes appear to have made any difference to them.
The 137 sites have not been changed ever since their allotment, unlike that of other sites, a source in the Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) said.
The MCHS layout, located in Jakkur, abutting National Highway-7, is one of the prime areas of Arkavathy Layout. Many sites in this area were denotified by previous governments mainly due to the rising land prices and the location. But sites in the MCHS layout were left untouched.
The size of sites in MCHS Layout ranges from 3,000 square feet to over 6,000 square feet. The BDA handed over all the sites and its ownership on the MCHS Layout before 2010 and the layout development by MCHS has been going on since 2011. The BDA is not forming the layout. It’s like a private layout inside Arkavathy Layout. Land prices in this layout are very high, ranging up to Rs 8,000 per sq ft, the source said.
The source pointed that besides MCHS Layout, some sites in Arkavathy Layout were also given to IAS and IPS officers and other State government officials.
Even these sites were not touched in the denotification and redo cases. The matter pertaining to these areas did not even come up for hearing in the Lok Adalat held in March, 2014, at the BDA’s head office.
G Shivaprakash, president of Arkavathy Layout Allottees’ Association, termed it “an injustice”. “This (MCHS) layout belongs to IAS and IPS officers and they are taking due care of their interests but ignoring the common people who are actually suffering. The whole system has taken the common man for granted and this is yet another example of it. Now, after the entire denotification scam seems to have died down, there is no word from the BDA or the government about what will happen next. Most allottees are taxpayers but still do not have sites in hand. Since most allottees are senior citizens, getting bank loans for constructing houses will be nearly impossible for them if the delay persists.”