JOIN US8,813 allottees to be given Arkavathi Layout sites soon
The saga of the ill-fated Arkavathi Layout allotment may finally be resolved in the next one and a half months. The Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) has said that it will be handing over the possession of the sites to 8,813 allottees April first week onwards.
BDA commissioner T Sham Bhatt told Deccan Herald that the Authority was ready with 7,000 sites and another 2,000 sites will be ready in a month. “We will hand over the sites on a priority basis from April first week,” he said.
Embroiled in denotification scams, litigations and farmers’ agitations, the Arkavathi Layout has been in the doldrums for the past 10 years. Since 2004, when the final notification was issued for the layout, land scams began to surface with rampant denotifications under successive governments. The High Court and the Supreme Court, in the now famous Bondu Ramaswamy Vs State of Karnataka and Others case, laid down six parameters for denotification of land after final acquisition.
On Saturday, Bhatt said all those whose sites had been denotified, after registration, under the ‘re-do’ cases will now be given alternative sites without additional financial burden. The Commissioner said the BDA would bear the registration costs of all these allottees.
The Commissioner said 2,000 allottees will have to be given alternative sites in Arkavathi Layout. Till date, 5,000 sites have been registered in the Layout.
On the developed land to be handed over to farmers in the 40:60 ratio, Bhatt said the BDA would take up the allotment after the allottees receive their share.
Meanwhile, justifying his stance that the civic agency had not denotified any land in the past one year, Bhatt said the Authority had already submitted a list of 944 acres to the State government, which have been ‘excluded’ from the formation of the layout.
He said another report on 1,850 acres of land, which is required for the formation of the layout, had been sent to the government. Disputed survey numbers such as 90/1, 90/2 and 110/3 are in the ‘excluded’ list, Bhatt said, adding that they were denotified by the BDA at its board meeting in February 2013, when it denotified 423 acres meant for the layout. “After February 2013, no denotification has taken place,” he said.