The Bombay High Court, while hearing petitions seeking
to legalise illegal structures in various parts of the city, has ruled that
Regularization of unauthorized constructions will have to be permitted on a
case-to-case basis and should not be granted as a matter of course.
A division bench of the High Court held that the
planning authority had to consider various factors such as infrastructure,
congestion, water supply, and roads before regularizing illegal constructions
against payment of a penalty. If there
is an increasing pressure and burden on the existing facilities and amenities
then the whole system would collapse resulting in large-scale inconvenience, it
was observed.
The cases before the Hon'ble Court pertained to
regularization of various structures in Bandra, Goregaon, Boriveli, and
Pydhonie apart from the top 17 floors of Gaurav Gagan, a 24-storeyed building in Kandiveli (West).
The Hon'ble High Court further ruled that it cannot be
said as a matter of general rule that unauthorized constructions must be
regularized if the floor space index (FSI) is available or can be generated in
the form of transfer of development rights (TDR) from other sources by the
builder. Although section 53(1) of the Maharashtra Regional Town Planning Act
provides for regularization of unauthorized structures, the indiscriminate
regularization through TDR or FSI can have disastrous consequences. Before the
authorities take any decision about regularization they must not only consider
the alleged hardship to individual flat purchasers but also the interest of
those living in the neighbourhood and the public at large.
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