Representative image.
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Bengaluru’s thriving real estate sector, which came to a standstill for nearly four months, received a fresh lease of life with two primary government agencies starting to clear pending files after pressure from the builders.
Authorities have started approving files related to development plans, building sketches and changes of land use that were kept on hold since the Assembly elections, multiple sources said.
Last week, the Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) cleared at least 50 files related to real estate developments in a single meeting that was convened for the first time after the new government came into force in May.
Similarly, the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), which too had stopped processing applications for large residential and commercial projects (one acre and above), has started approving these files, officials and builders said.
The demand for real estate in Bengaluru is considered very high. Nearly a dozen builders launched at least one new project every month or two since the Covid-19 pandemic subsided.
The Congress-led government was under pressure to resume the clearance of real estate-related files as it had orally directed both the BBMP and the BDA not to process these requests.
While the BDA discusses and approves real estate-related requests at a monthly meeting headed by the chairman, the BBMP follows a different method where each file is cleared separately.
Approval for buildings on less than 1-acre plots, which are processed at the BBMP’s zonal level, had resumed a few weeks ago.
Election tax?
Last month, former chief minister H D Kumaraswamy threw a bomb, claiming that the Congress government had fixed Rs 100 per square foot as bribe from builders in exchange for clearing files. “By giving an excuse for the Lok Sabha elections, a powerful person in the government is trying to extort Rs 2,000 crore from builders,” Kumaraswamy said without naming any minister.
A prominent builder, speaking anonymously, said no builder had so far paid bribes as per the new rates that are doing the rounds but feared that the fixed rates based on per square foot of built-up area could spell a death knell for small builders. “The government is supposed to facilitate the ease of doing business. The price of real estate is already high, and buyers will be burdened to pay more,” he said.
A member of the Confederation of Real Estate Developers’ Association of India (CREDAI), Bengaluru Chapter, said time was money for the real estate sector and asked the government not to misuse this limitation to milk more in the name of election tax. “The less said (about corruption), the better,” he added.