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Chandigarh: has suffered a major setback Chandigarh Housing Board ,chb), the UT administration has rejected his request to allow the conversion of commercial To freehold leasehold properties.
“The decision is also indicative of the administration’s stand on the demand of city businesses and industrial associations to allow long-leasehold commercial and industrial plots to be freehold,” said a UT official.
In a letter to CHB, the administration has said that there is no such policy under which conversion of commercial properties of CHB can be allowed. The CHB has been pursuing permission for over a year.
Even after slashing the prices of its leasehold properties by 30%, there are no takers for its commercial properties. About 100 such properties are lying unsold even after repeated auction attempts by the CHB. These properties are worth crores of rupees.
“Even though the administration has prohibited the CHB from converting its leasehold commercial properties into freehold, the UT Estate Office is auctioning its commercial and institutional properties on freehold basis. Last October, the estate office earned Rs 30.84 crore from the two nursing home sites,” said an official.
One site had earned Rs 18.25 crore and the other had earned Rs 12.58 crore against the reserve price of Rs 6.91 crore. It was the first time that the Estates Office had offered nursing home sites on a freehold basis. Earlier attempts to sell these sites on leasehold basis did not attract any buyers.
While CHB has, over the years, been able to garner over Rs 200 crore from auctions of its freehold residential properties, it found few takers for its commercial properties during these auctions.
It was in February last year, when the UT Administrator Banwarilal Purohit The DDA along with its various agencies like UT Estate Office, Municipal Corporation and CHB had decided to allow auction of all unsold residential, commercial, industrial and nursing home sites on freehold basis.
Soon after the verdict, the CHB wrote to the administration seeking permission to dispose of its unsold properties. On not getting any response from the administration, the CHB sent several reminders to take a decision. The CHB should take the administration’s approval and pay the conversion charges as most of its properties were built on land given on lease basis by the administration.
The CHB had earlier also promised to pay any conversion charges levied by the administration for conversion of its properties.
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