Assembly clears Bill to penalise illegal buildings in B’luru

The Legislative Assembly passed four Bills on Friday, including one that seeks to penalise unauthorised buildings in the Bengaluru municipal limits.

The Karnataka Municipal Corporations (Amendment) Bill proposes to levy double the property tax as a penalty on buildings that have violated the norms. “The law already has a provision to levy a penalty as part of the property tax in Mysuru, Mangaluru, Hubballi-Dharwad, Kalaburagi and other cities, but Bengaluru has been left out. With this amendment, the penalty provision will be made applicable to building violations in Bengaluru as well,” Home Minister Basavaraj Bommai, who piloted the Bill on Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa’s behalf, said.

Law Minister J C Madhuswamy added that the penalty was not a permanent feature. “The penalty is only till the corporation takes action,” he said.

Some members expressed apprehension that the penalty will amount to regularisation of unauthorised construction. “If this becomes an implied right and we cannot take action or demolish, what then?” Chickpet MLA Uday Garudachar. Former Congress minister H K Patil also had the same doubt.

“This is not a regularisation measure,” Bommai clarified.

The home minister also said that Bill would also bring clarity on the fees to be collected for laying optical fibre cables (OFC) across the state. “There was no clarity on fee fixation because the Act says, ‘levying of such fees or annual track rent’. We have replaced the word ‘or’ with ‘and’,” Bommai said. “So going forward, there’ll be one fee levied at the time of laying OFC and then an annual rent.”

Three other Bills were passed in the Assembly - the Karnataka Open Places (Prevention of Disfigurement) (Amendment) Bill to extend its applicability to all municipal areas, the Karnataka State Universities (Amendment) Bill to bifurcate Gulbarga University to set up Raichur University, and the Karnataka Municipalities (Amendment) Bill to introduce the NOTA in ULB elections.