Black flag to fight against Govt
A resident puts up a black flag at his house in the city on Wednesday to demand the regularisation of layouts that have been identified as the Government lands under the Urban Land Ceiling Act.Owners of about 5,000 houses in eight layouts in Singanallur-Ondipudur area in the city put up black flags on their buildings on Wednesday to demand the regularisation of their sites. They also threatened to surrender their voter identity and family cards. These layouts were among the more than 150 across the city where lands had been brought under the Urban Land Ceiling Act in the late Nineties and therefore not found eligible for regularisation.The Government introduced a scheme last year for the regularisation of the house sites in unapproved layouts at Rs.5 a sq.ft. in the Corporation areas.The Coimbatore Corporation then began the process of regularising over 25,000 sites in more than 500 layouts. This scheme was aimed at ultimately regularising the layouts so that these areas could be provided with basic amenities such as roads, drainage, street lights and drinking water supply.
But, even as this process was on, some of the layouts were found to have been categorised as Government surplus lands under the Act. The layouts and houses were then seen as not qualified for regularisation. Civic authorities said that the layouts would be seen as unauthorised occupation under the Act.Elected representatives had since then made fervent appeals to the Government to exempt these layouts from the Act and facilitate their regularisation. Recently, Mayor R. Venkatachalam made a fresh request to the Government to regularise the layouts.The residents said they had put up the flags to condemn the lack of response from the State Government on representations sent to it by them and also by the elected representatives.
Secretary of the Government Surplus Land Affected Residents’ Association R. Mohan said that the flags were put up in front of houses in Karumariamman Layout, Tiruvalluvar Nagar (North), Thanneer Thottam Street, Narayanasamy Layout, Kannan Nagar, Tiruvalluvar Nagar-N.K. Palayam, Ramasamy Nagar and N.K.G. Nagar. In a letter to the Chief Minister and Revenue Minister, he said that the black flags were the first stage of protest. In the next stage, the residents would surrender their voter identity cards and family cards to point out that they had been left in the lurch.
The residents of Karumariamman Layout said it was formed in 1985. The sites were duly registered and the houses built with loans. The residents had also been paying Property Tax and other taxes to the Corporation.Now, the Government had invoked the provisions of the Urban Land Ceiling Act to ban the sale of the houses/sites and also their regularisation. When approached for regularisation, the residents were told by authorities that their lands had been brought under the Act in April 1999 and these were handed over to the Assistant Commissioner of Urban Land Ceiling.Appeals had been made to the Local Administration Minister, Rural Industries Minister and the District Collector also.
Legislator from Tirupur C. Govindaswamy also raised the issue in the Assembly through a call attention motion. But, there was sign of the Government lifting the ban and making way for the regularisation of these layouts. Therefore, the residents had now decided to show their resentment through protests. The residents said they were not asking for two acres of land or two cents of house sites or colour televisions or free rice. All they wanted was the regularisation of their layouts.
