The Urban Development Department (UDD) of Maharashtra Government has moved a bill to regularise all the plots, houses whose registry was completed till December 2020. The Urban Development Department (UDD) has proposed this amendment to the original act Maharashtra Gunthewari Developments (Regularisation, Upgradation and Control) Act, 2001. After the passage of the bill, it will be called as Maharashtra Gunthewari Developments (Regularisation, Upgradation and Control) (Amendment) Act, 2021.

 

The confusion about whether the amendment be applicable to the areas under Nagpur Metropolitan Region Authority Development (NMRDA) or not reigned supreme. This is like an amnesty scheme. One such scheme was brought long back by the Government wherein the authority had appealed to people to pay Rs 5,000 and get their plots regularised. But a person approached High Court, calling the scheme illegal. High Court had stayed the scheme and dismissed the petition. Gunthewari is a traditional method used to measure land in the state. However, as per the Gunthewari Act, the practice of creating small plots of agricultural land in multiple gunthas (1,089 sq ft area) was illegal and hence, carrying out constructions on gunthewari land was also illegal. There are several plots which had never applied to get Non-Agricultural (NA) status, nor they got their lands sanctioned from Town Planning (TP) department. They keep doing construction and it became a big issue.

 

To give them respite Congress-led Government had in 2001 came up with the Maharashtra Gunthewari Development (Regularisation, Upgradation and. Control) Act. It was applicable on areas on the outskirts of a municipal corporation and city boundary limits for regularisation of gunthewari constructions till 2000. Fadnavis-led Government also had tried to make an amendment and it had put a proposal in 2015 to extend the deadline, but it failed. The proposal was placed before the Cabinet led by Uddhav Thackeray Government and it got approval. The regularisation of illegal gunthewari constructions till 2015 was extended till December 31, 2020. Now, people whose plots are under Gunthewari even from 1995, can go to Municipal Corporation and get regularised those by paying whatever the minimum amount may be. The Maharashtra Gunthewari Developments (Regularisation, Upgradation and Control) Act, 2001 (Mah. XXVII of 2001) has been enacted for regularisation and upgradation of certain Gunthewari developments and for the control of Gunthewari developments and for matters connected therewith in the State, as there had been a growing tendency to form plots unauthorisedly by subdividing private lands and transfer them to needy persons for the construction of dwelling units.

 

The Gunthewari developments existing as on the January 1, 2001 were allowed to regularised and upgraded under the said Act. The amendment says, ‘Although, Gunthewari developments are unlawful and there is an obvious need to curb such developments, it has, at the same time, to be appreciated that, it is neither practicable nor desirable to demolish, on a mass scale, the old and long existing constructions made on such plots. This is especially so because the formal housing market has failed to meet the demands of economically weaker sections of the society for shelter in terms of both quantity and price. Gunthewari developments are a form of informal housing and have to be viewed as a positive response, however flawed and imperfect, of the common people to meet their shelter needs.’

 

The amendment further states, ‘The people belonging to lower income group and middle income group, due to lack of proper implementation of the said Act and regularisation of Gunthewari, are deprived from Government benefits or got limited benefits of Government Schemes. Hence, taking into consideration the basic needs for housing of economically weaker sections and general public belonging to middle income group and also the rising demands from the public in this respect, it is considered expedient to regularise and upgrade the Gunthewari developments existing as on December 31, 2020, by suitably amending the said Act.