HP cabinet approves Town and Country Planning (Amendment) Bill

Himachal Pradesh cabinet today approved the Town and Country Planning (Amendment) Bill 2016, further relaxing the norms for compounding the deviations up to 70 per cent on "as is where is" basis.
The amendment bill, which is further dilution of the Town and Country Planning (Amendment) ordinance promulgated on June 8, 2016 and provides for regularisation of building raised without any sanctioned plan on nominal charges, regularisation of structures without meeting the requirements of setbacks, regularising of Parking floors for other purposes and even the habitual offenders, who had availed the benefits under earlier retention policies will also be considered for regularisation.

To encourage the violators, the compounding fee which was nominal in the ordinance has been slashed to almost half and would be charged at flat rate of Rs 800 per sq mts in Municipal areas and Rs 400 per mts in rural areas which implies that unauthorised buildings valuing crores of rupees would be regularised by paying few thousands rupees.
In the Ordinance, it was clearly mentioned that space for setbacks would be left open by the proposed bill waives off the requirement of open space in the shape of "set-backs".
Totally unauthorised buildings without an building plan would also be regularies on payment of compounding fee of Rs 1200 per sq mts in urban areas and Rs 600 per sq mts in rural areas and the violators would get further grace period of applying for regularisation as the effective date would be from notification of amended Act and 60 days time would afforded for filing applications.

The owners of unauthorised buildings which were not in the municipal or TCP area not required to apply for regularisation and their structures would stand regularised without applying for regularisation even though such buildings are the Planning areas.