Just as the survey of buildings or properties with required Building Use (BU) permission is on across the state, it has become evident that 95% of the 34 lakh-odd properties that fall under the municipality or Nagar Palika jurisdiction in Gujarat do not hold legal BU permission, as per senior urban development authorities.

The officials claim that the purpose of the sample survey of 8,000-odd buildings in the state is to assist in drafting legislation that will be a roadmap for every citizen to mandatorily get BU approval for his or her property. The survey is likely to be made by February 20.

The exercise was taken up after the high court questioned why despite the Gujarat Regularisation of Unauthorised Development (GRUDA) Act, certain buildings in Gujarat were devoid of legal BU permission.The truth is that people in municipalities and municipal corporations never came ahead to get BU approval due to income issues, as per a senior urban development department authority.

While emphasising the problem within nagarpalikas, the official told the media that in the case of older buildings built before 2007, authorities or citizens did not care whether properties were constructed on land with non-agricultural (NA) approval and, in this process, evaded applying for BU approval.

After 2008, the state government made NA approval mandatory ahead of applying for BU approval. This flip-flop and lack of clarity on mandatory processes before BU requirement was the issue for this tremendous confusion. It additionally prevented people from coming forward. Now they are stuck with buildings having 2-3 floors that are not part of the original building plans across municipalities and municipal corporations. He additionally pointed out that GRUDA Act or impact fee law was implemented without conducting a scientific study.

The anomaly of BU approval persisted despite the execution of the Gujarat Regularisation of Unauthorised Development Act in 2001, which was an effort to normalise buildings made before November 22, 2000. A decade later, the same Act was again brought into power to standardise buildings built before March 28, 2011. Both these efforts did not resolve the problem of buildings without BU.

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