Ghub House owners liable for penalties linked to Jantri, Real Estate News, ET Real Estate

AhmedabadIllegal extensions such as additional rooms or floors in 11,000 dwellings that were built by Gujarat Housing Board ,GHB) are out of scope GRUD Act 2022 and cannot be regularised.

Instead, such owners will have to pay fine as per jantri rates for such illegal extension and the construction will not be regularised.

The issue shows that the GRUD Act 2022 ignores those GHB home owners who want to regularize their illegal extensions. Such property owners seeking regularization of illegal constructions will not be entertained. There are around 80,000 GHB built houses in the city.

Senior officials say that the existing regularization rates under the GRUDA Act 2022 will not be applicable to GHB houses. “In 2019, a circular was issued by the state government, where a jantri-based penalty formula was introduced for GHB landlords making illegal constructions. As per the rules, these illegal constructions in GHB housing cannot be regularised. Thus the GRUD Act 2022 does not apply to GHB dwellings,” said a town planning official.

Dinesh Brar, President Gujarat Housing Vasahat Mandal said, “GHB is making residential Schemes since 1960. Most of the GHB colonies are along the 132-feet Ring Road between Shivranjani and RTO Circle. Most are EWS, LIG, MIG type. Many of these 11,000 owners have not yet paid their installments as there were some issues with their documents.”

In 2019, the GHB decided to increase the amount of the fine, which ranged from Rs 150 to Rs 600 per square metre, and introduced a jantri-based formula, a GHB official said. “Now, in a GHB colony in Naranpura, if a homeowner has constructed an additional 10 square metres, they pay a fine of Rs 1.90 lakh on jantri rate basis instead of Rs 19,000 under the old scheme.” Under the GRUD Act 2022, a private landlord of a private society in the same area will have to pay just Rs 3,000.

“The GHB has constructed 80,000 houses in the city, out of which the document work for about 11,000 houses is pending,” said HP Valera, estate manager of the Gujarat Housing Board.