Repeated retention policies introduced by Himachal Pradesh Government have boosted up unauthorised constructions in the hill, which now pose a serious threat to life and property in case of an earthquake particularly.
The observation has been made by the Comptroller and Auditor General, in his report on Social, General and Economic sectors released recently. Portraying a grim picture of earthquake preparedness of the State, CAG has Stated that an increasing trend in the number of encroachments or unauthorised constructions has been witnessed, in each new retention policy.
Himachal Pradesh Government had introduced first retention policy in 1997 and recently the Virbhadra Singh Government has announced the seventh such policy to regularise the unauthorised constructions in the State.
These policies were introduced to regularise the buildings with additional stories or constructed with deviation from the approved building plan or on undersize plots etc.
Talking on the issue, Principal Accountant General (Audit) Himachal Pradesh Ram Mohan Johri said that the State Government had introduced first retention policy to regularize the construction in notified planning areas of various civic bodies including Shimla in 1997. The state had received as many 747 applications for regularisation of unauthorised constructions.
As per the available data, the state received 602 applications under second policy introduced in 1999, followed by 899 applications in 2000, 665 applications in 2002, 929 applications in 2004 and 1307 applications in 2009 respectively
A gigantic leap has been registered in the number of applications, submitted under the latest retention policy introduced in 2016 by the Town and Country Planning Department while a total of 5149 cases of unauthorised constructions had been filed for regularisation under the first six retention policies launched till 2009.
As per Johri, the State Government approved 2106 applications for regularisation, waiving off the TCP norms amending some provisions to make change in structural norms and charging compounding fee. About 3043 remaining cases of this period were rejected because they were found exceeding the permissible limit allowed under the respective policies.
Despite declining approval to around three thousand structures, no action has been taken by the state to check and rectify such unauthorised structures in the State till now. The report comments, “Department of TCP and respective urban bodies failed to take action on such unauthorised or haphazard construction till Oct 2016 when it came up with the new policy.''
CAG has pointed out that ineffective enforcement of regulations enabled flourishing of unauthorised construction of buildings which was subsequently regularised by payment of fines jeopardizing provisions of quick relief and assistance in the event of any calamity.
The reports says that Himachal Pradesh Town and Country Planning (TCP) rules provides that maximum acceptable slope for construction of building should be 45 degrees however report found that most of buildings were made above 75 degree slopes make such construction more vulnerable to accidents.
As per the report, 2459 buildings constructed in the cemetery of Sanjauli, Krishana Nagar , Kangnadhar and others areas of Shimla during 2011-16 blatantly contravene the norms as state agencies did not acted to stop such construction.
