Depending on the outcome of a Supreme Court case, the drive to regularise open plots in illegal layouts across the state is expected to generate between Rs 2,000 and Rs 3,000 crore. The state has already received a sum of Rs 250 crore as part of the application fee.

The LRS scheme was announced by the government in September last year, and applications were accepted till October 2020. As the government had stopped registering open plots in unapproved layouts, the scheme received a huge response, with 25 lakh people applying to regularise their plots. Individual plot owners were required to pay a one-time fee of Rs 1,000, while layout developers were required to pay a fee of Rs 10,000 with their applications.

Due to a high court case, the government was unable to proceed with regularisation after receiving the applications. The Supreme Court is currently hearing the case.

Municipal administration department principal secretary Arvind Kumar issued a memo on Tuesday, nine months after receiving the applications, directing officials from the municipal administration and panchayat raj departments to process the applications on time by issuing certain guidelines.

Preliminary processing would be divided into two stages for this purpose. In this stage, gram panchayats and civic bodies should group all LRS applications received into different clusters, such as a village, survey number, locality, and colony, and keep them ready for site inspections.

The municipal administration department memo informed in Stage II, each cluster should be inspected by a team composed of officials from the district collector's office, revenue, irrigation, panchayat, and local town planning staff, who should then upload their findings online.

The principal secretary told the media that the entire exercise should be completed in 15 days.