Guv gives assent to controversial HPTCP Amendment Bill

Himachal Pradesh Governor Acharya Devvrat today gave assent to controversial HP Town and Country Planning (HPTCP) Amendment Bill, 2016, paving way for regularization of all illegal constructions in urban areas on "As is, where is" basis.
The state assembly had passed the bill last August and initially, the governor had shown some reservations and raised several queries last month over the provisions of the Bill, Raj Bhavan sources said.
The Bill provides for regularization of illegal structures irrespective of area and even multi-storied buildings constructed without getting any building plans sanctioned, qualify for regularization on nominal compounding fee.
The move of the government to regularize illegal constructions on a massive scale had also drawn flak from High Court which had observed that the move of the government to regularise unauthorized constructions/encroachments "is suggestive of non-governance."

The High Court observed that "the action of the state government to regularise the unauthorised construction/ encroachments is suggestive of non-governance as permitting the unauthorised construction under the very nose of the authorities and later on regularising those amounts to failure of constitutional mechanism/ machinery".
A division bench of High Court consisting of Justice Rajiv Sharma and Justice Sureshwar Thakur had made these observations while hearing a case pertaining to encroachments on the forest land.

"The state government should not regularise the unauthorised construction and also the encroachments that too, on the forest land as it is expected from the state to maintain the rule of law", the bench said adding that the state should promote honesty instead of dishonesty.

Observing that thousands of unauthorised constructions had not been raised overnight, the bench said that the government machinery was mute spectator by letting the people raise unauthorized constructions and also encroach upon the government land.
Coming down heavily on the state it further observed: "The state functionary/machinery has adopted an ostrich-like attitude, the honest persons are at the receiving end and the persons who have raised unauthorised construction are being encouraged to break the law.
"This attitude also violates the human rights of the honest citizens, who have raised their construction in accordance with law and there are thousands of buildings being regularised, which are not even structurally safe."

A large number of illegal constructions have been raised after the Bill was passed and all the constructions would now be regularised under the amended Act.