District administration starts marking documents with ‘land under ceiling’ stamp, SDO initiates reviewing mutation entries of ULC-related surplus pproperties
Bhayandar : In what could snowball into a major scam, hundreds of acres of notified land falling under the ceiling limit of the Thane Urban Agglomeration are now under scrutiny for illegal sale and transfer in Mira Bhayandar.
The matter came to light when social activist Imtiyaz Shaikh sourced out information under the RTI Act to find several such properties were not only sold in the open market sans nods from the competent authority, but mutation entries of original owners were deleted and transferred to new buyers in the 7/12 revenue records.
Passed in 1976, the Urban Land (Ceiling & Regulation) Act – ULCRA was aimed at preventing profiteering through massive land hoarding and to create affordable housing for the weaker section. While any individual could hold land not more than 500 sq mt the Act mandates developers to hand over 5% of the flats/surrender surplus land for public housing. Around 1022 schemes have been sanctioned under section 20 of the ULCRA in revenue villages falling under limits of the Mira Bhayandar Municipal Corporation. Although ULCA was scrapped in 2008, developers and land owners still cannot escape liability of surrendering their excess land. While section 27 prohibits transfer of urban property, section 27 clearly states that notices are to be given before transfer of vacant land.
However, the government barely recovered much land for public housing as a number of such properties continued to be illegally sold and transferred. Despite several reminders the district administration failed to enter the ULC information on land records to restrict the illegalities.
After Shaikh’s regular follow-up on the issue, the revenue officials finally woke up from their slumber and started marking all documents related to ULC land with a ‘land under ceiling’ stamp.
The Sub Divisional Officer has initiated the procedure of reviewing mutation entries under section 258 of the Maharashtra Land Revenue Code, 1966. The action has sent waves across the local realty industry especially amongst those developers who purchased such properties at cheap rates to make a killing later.
