Centre to regularise illegal religious structures now

 After giving the nod to regularisation of 900-odd unauthorised colonies in the national capital, the Union urban development ministry has decided to regularise all the religious structures in the City which have come up on government land.

Announcing the decision on Friday, Union development minister Kamal Nath said, “There are several religious structures in the City which have been constructed illegally, but are visited by thousands every day. There is no way out than regularising them.”
The minister however said the relaxation will come with some riders and the regularisation will be done only after assessing the ground situation.

“Only those structures which were constructed before 2007 would be taken up for consideration. Apart from that availability of parking space would be one of the parameters,” Nath said.

At places where parking space is a constraint, the government agencies would chalk out a plan and earmark parking space for the structures before regularisation, the minister added.

He informed that the ministry and Delhi Development Authority (DDA) officials are making an assessment of the exact number of structures in the city to initiate process of regularisation thereafter.

Defends regularisation

Meanwhile, Nath also defended the decision of regularising 917 unauthorised colonies in Delhi.

“There is no other choice as it is difficult to remove around four million people from the city who have been living in those colonies since decades. The population of the city is growing every passing day, and people are encroaching upon the land for housing,” said Nath.

The minister also played down apprehensions that such policies would lead to more illegal constructions and encroachments.

“It has been made clear that only those constructions which were done before 2007 would be considered. Layout plan of all the colonies has been prepared through satellite images and boundaries have been fixed accordingly,” the minister added.

He said enforcement agencies in the city like the Municipal Corporation of Delhi need to work efficiently to stop illegal constructions so that no such colonies come into existence anywhere.