Real estate lobby demands changes in Land Reforms Act

The Karnataka chapter of real estate body The Confederation of Real Estate Developers' Associations of India (CREDAI), has asked Karnataka to make changes to the recently-announced Karnataka Land Reforms Act.

"As per the Karnataka Land Reforms Act, a non-agriculturalist cannot purchase agricultural land directly from the owners of the land in Karnataka. CREDAI has requested the state government to give exemption to the lands which are earmarked under the Developmental Plan prepared by the BDA, BIAAPA, BMRDA among others, in Bangalore district," CREDAI said in a statement.

It added that all the lands earmarked for development plans prepared in Mysore, Mangalore, Belgaum, Hubli-Dharwad, Gulbarga and other cities should also be exempted from the application of Section 79 A & B of the Karnataka Land Reforms Act. Since these lands have been declared as lands eligible for development either for residential or industrial purposes. Also, in view of these lands having lost their agricultural status, we request the government to exempt the said lands accordingly from the application of Section 79 A& B of the Karnataka Land Reforms Act, CREDAI has said.

The real estate body added that Karnataka has still not announced the policy for the quarrying of sand due to which the construction industry is facing a lot of problems in getting sand for construction. "If the situation continues for a further period of one or two months, then the entire construction activities will come to a standstill," it said.

Lakhs of people who depend on the construction activities will lose their jobs. We are also not getting "M" grade sand and also due to the ban on crushing of jelly industry, which was stopped by the Pollution Control Board. CREDAI has asked the state government to immediately announce the policies for quarrying of sand ô jelly," CREDAI highlighted.

Nagaraja Reddy, president, CREDAI Karnataka, added that the registration of sites in BIAPPA and BMRDA area has been stopped for the past four months on the ground that the khatha extract, which is used for registration issued by the panchayat authorities concerned should be from a computer format. "Since most of the panchayats don't have a facility to generate the khatha extract through computers, registration is stalled. We request the government to allow registration for all the properties which have been approved by the planning authorities like BIAPPA, BMRDA among others," Reddy added.