Govt plans to legalise plot in Sainik Farms

Will charge Rs 18,000 per sqm for land measuring up to 100 square metre

Residents of Sainik Farms, an upscale unauthorised colony built on public land in south Delhi, will be charged Rs 18,000 per square metre as land cost for properties measuring up to 100 sq metre to get legitimacy.

Apart from the cost of land, a penalty of up to Rs 9,000 per square metre will be recovered from the colony’s residents who own a property measuring up to 100 sq metre. Owners of bigger plots will have to pay a higher land rate and penalty.
The land rate for houses built on plots bigger than 200 metre would be Rs 27,000 per square metre and penalty for plots more than 200 sq metre will be Rs 13,500 per square metre.

New blueprint
The slabs of land cost and penalty for Sainik Farms are part a new blueprint approved by the Delhi cabinet to divide the nearly 1,800 unauthorised colonies into categories from ‘A’ to ‘H’ and charge variable land cost and penalty from residents in them, depending upon the location of the colony and the size of the plot.

Category ‘A’ reflects the most premium segment while Category ‘H’ is for the base level colonies.

As per the cabinet proposal, an owner of a 200 sq metre house in Sainik Farms would have to pay about Rs 81 lakh to regularise his property. A 500 sq metre house owner would need to pay Rs 2 crore for regularisation of the property.

Considering that most properties in the colony are over 500 sq metre, the Delhi
government is looking to collect anything between Rs 50-100 crore from the entire colony – a welcome inflow of revenue in view of sagging VAT collections.

Sainik Farms is an elite unauthorised colony that has come on 723 acres of public land and is home to influential retired bureaucrats, judges, diplomats and businessmen.
Sources said for after almost two decades of the colony’s existence, the residents have managed to save their properties from demolition squads by paying bribes to municipal and police official.

Along with Sainik Farms, the top two-three land rates and penalty slabs, among all the 1,797 unauthorised colonies considered for regularisation, would be applicable to two other posh unauthorised colonies like Mahendru Enclave and Anant Ram Dairy.

No penalty
The Arvind Kejriwal cabinet has also decided not to charge any penalty from  colonies in categories ‘F’, ‘G’ and ‘H’ – a move seen as an attempt to appease the lower middleclass which forms the core of the ruling Aam Aadmi Party’s vote bank. Residents of these colonies will, however, need to pay the cost of the public land to the government.

The cabinet has created three slabs for collecting cost of land from the residents. The first slab is for plots up to 100 sq m, the second slab is for plots between 101 sq m and 200 sq m and the third slab is for plots of more than 200 sq mt. Similarly, three categories have been created for collecting penalty from the house owner in different colonies.

For a 200 sq metre plot in Category ‘B’ colony the land charge would be Rs 24,000 per sq metre and the penalty rate would be Rs 12,000 per sq metre.

In a Category ‘H’ colony, a 200 sq metre plot will invite a land cost at the rate of Rs 2,000 per sq metre.