The Transfer of Development Rights (TDR) bank proposed in this year’s Palike budget though provides a ‘market’ for Rights, insiders believe that it may lead to heightened corruption in the civic agency.
The Palike embarked on the idea of the TDR bank following widespread indignation against the not-so-popular scheme to trade their property for Rights.
The Palike, through this new arrangement, will be the nodal agency to buy and sell TDRs. The concept of the bank is to prevent citizens from being “robbed” by greedy developers, Taxation and Finance Standing Committee chairman Manjunath Raju told Deccan Herald.
“The Palike proposes to relieve citizens of problems they face while selling their TDRs.
Most citizens are meted out a raw deal by developers,” said Raju. According to the proposal, the Palike will start scouting for financial institutions to provide monetary support for the purchase of TDRs.
“We will buy TDRs from citizens and open an account against their name. If the citizens want, we can give them cash in return for the TDR after it has been transferred in the name of Palike. The TDR will then be sold to whoever wishes to buy them for constructing highrises in the City,” he said.
While the move may instill confidence among citizens to accept TDRs, some officers believe that the system would fuel corruption in the Palike.
“There already have been instances of Palike engineers buying TDRs from citizens and selling them for profit to developers. The proposed bank may accord a legal sanctity to such murky deals,” a source said.
It is suspected that the proposal to set up a TDR bank was in fact mooted by the Engineering department within the BBMP.
Palike Commissioner Siddaiah at a monthly meeting in February had said that the cash-strapped BBMP cannot set up a TDR Bank.
