Bengaluru property owners up in arms after BBMP notification for road widening lists past owners

Property owners on ITPL – Hoodi Main Road who are set to lose parts of their properties to road widening are up in arms after Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) issued a draft notification for land acquisition on June 18. The civic body in its notification has listed names of owners in Records of Rights, Tenancy and Crops (RTC), that are not updated for decades now, even as the property ownership has changed several hands now.

Significantly, BBMP itself had issued notices to the present owners for road widening in 2017, acknowledging their ownership.

H.M. Chandrashekhar, who bought a plot and built a residence off the road in 1987, is now shocked to see his part of the plot and building in survey number 191 of Hoodi village marked for acquisition and the owner listed as Nagappa, who was the owner of the said land as per RTC last updated in 1968. When he bought the land in 1987, Nagappa was not its owner.

Another property owner, Venkatesh Reddy, had his house built on part of his ancestral land (survey no 192/1) in 1999, but the notice now lists his great-grandfather, Dodda Tayappa Reddy, who died over half a century ago, as the owner of the land. So is the tale of many other property owners in the area. Moreover, as the road has seen extensive development on either side, the draft notification lists the status of the land as empty, as per RTCs.

“The BBMP is doing this deliberately to cut out our rights as legitimate property owners to even fair compensation. Back in 2017, BBMP wanted to widen this road by 1.5 metres on either side and served us notices for acquisition. They agreed to compensate us with ₹18,197 per sq. ft as per the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition (Rehabilitation and Resettlement) Act, 2013. But it was not pursued. Now the draft notification doesn’t even name us as owners, when we have A Khata, paying taxes etc and BBMP itself had acknowledged us before,” rued Mr. Chandrashekhar.

Concerns over ‘TDR scam’ 

In an objection to the draft notification filed by the property owners, they raise concerns that this move by civic officials may lead to a “TDR scam” where bogus land owners are provided Transferrable Development Rights (TDR). “This notification is done in haste to benefit a few vested interests and also to repeat the TDR scam reported earlier, where officials have been accused of making wrongful gains by issuing notifications in the names of bogus land owners and thereby granting TDR illegally,” the objection read.

There have been earlier instances where bogus land owners were issued TDRs, and the cases of the same are being probed by the Karnataka Lokayukta and the Directorate of Enforcement (ED). ED had raided multiple locations in the city in the last week of May in connection with the TDR scam.

Property owners have demanded that the draft notification be immediately cancelled and a fresh notification be issued with the names of existing owners listed. Property owners are also mulling over complaining to the Karnataka Lokayukta over the same.

However, Chief Civic Commissioner M. Maheshwar Rao told The Hindu that the notification was only a draft and property owners can make their claims in response to it and their claims will be considered while issuing a final notification.

Property owners have 30 days time from June 18 to make their claims and submit objections.

‘Not updating revenue records a problem’

Real estate industry insiders said that not updating revenue records in the city for decades now was a festering problem in having clear land titles. “The last city survey where RTCs were converted to urban records has only covered the old core city and contradicting ownership records is a problem in all areas beyond the core. What the civic body has done, going by revenue records, is per se legally not wrong and that is a larger problem,” said a prominent builder who did not wish to be named.