BDA clears parking lot in apartment, retrieves civic amenity sites

The Bangalore Development Authority recovered eight Civic Amenity (CA) sites (3.5 acres), allegedly encroached upon by a private builder to provide parking space for its apartment owners, during a demolition drive early Wednesday morning.

The Platinum City apartment complex in Yeshwantpur has amassed nearly Rs six crore by illegally allotting the parking space to 300 of its residents.

The complex, promoted by India Builders’ Corporation (IBC), had sold the encroached land as parking slots to its unsuspecting residents. It had collected between Rs 1.5 lakh and Rs 2 lakh from each of its residents.

According to the Karnataka Apartment Owners’ Act, 1972, selling an encroached property as parking space to residents amounts to a violation. The Act also states that no ‘undivided common area’ can be sold by builders. The common area is defined to include basements, cellars, yards, gardens, parking areas and storage spaces.

The BDA noted that it had served several notices on the builders on survey numbers 47 and 48 of Peenya village near HMT Road in Yeshwantpur, after noticing that the CA sites were encroached upon.

“As the builders of Platinum City did not surrender the sites despite several reminders, we decided to demolish the structures,” said BDA Superintendent of Police N N Indira.
In addition to demolishing the parking structures, the BDA also razed to ground the workers’ shed and a road leading to block 8 that were constructed on the CA sites.

“They even approached the court where their petition was dismissed. Finally, they agreed to repatriate the CA sites. However, despite persistent reminders, Platinum City did not surrender the sites to us, forcing the demolition,” said Indira.

The CA sites were, in fact, formed by the developer as per the condition of the BDA, so that amenities could be provided to residents of the complex.

However, instead of handing over the sites to the BDA, IBC utilised them to construct car parking, swimming pool and a club house on the said CA sites 1,2,3,4 and office on sites 5 and 6.