Govt hikes gunthewari charges by five times, to be 6% of RR value

Nagpur: In a major setback to poor people dreaming of owning a house, the state government has increased regularization charges under Gunthewari Act by five times and not three times. Though the notification was issued eight months ago, Nagpur Improvement Trust (NIT) has come to know about this a few days ago.
The government issued the notification for implementation of Gunthewari 2.0 on March 12 last year, for regularization of unauthorized layouts and plots that cropped up on or before December 31, 2020. On October 18 last year, the government had issued a notification increasing regularization charges. TOI was the first to report the steep rise in charges on October 20 last year.
After a delay of almost an year, the civic agency launched Gunthewari 2.0 on March 4. Stating hike in charges was very high, the board of NIT trustees in the meeting on March 2 took a decision to send a letter to the government requesting roll back of the decision.
NIT has received good response to the scheme as owners of over 60,000 unauthorized plots have submitted an application seeking regularization.
A few days ago, a team from Pune Municipal Corporation reportedly visited NIT to find out the reason behind high applications in the city. The officials from Pune informed NIT officials about revision in charges by the government on the same date.
NIT chairman Manoj Kumar Suryawanshi, general manager Nishikant Sukhe and others officials met and discussed the issue a day ago. The officials reportedly came to the conclusion that the government issued revised notification on October 18 last year itself.
NIT officials told TOI, “Revised notification said the charges will be three times the development charges being recovered by the planning authority, while giving building plan sanction under the Maharashtra Regional and Town Planning (MRTP) Act.”
As per earlier notification, the charges were supposed to be three times the charges finalized in 2001. As per notification issued in 2001, charges were Rs16 per sq ft. Thus, the charges would have been Rs48 per sq ft, which were less compared to existing charges of Rs56 per sq ft in the city, as revised in August 2014.
The charges were supposed to be Rs48,000 in case of plot of 1,000 sq ft as per the first order. As per revised notification, charges are three times the development charges. As per data available with NIT and Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC), development charges are 2% of ready reckoner (RR) value.
For areas situated on city’s outskirts like Chinchbhuvan, Wathoda, Zingabai Takli etc, the RR value is around Rs4,000 per sq ft. Thus, regularization charges will be Rs2.4 lakh for a plot of 1,000 sq ft, which means five times higher than the first order, and 4.3 times higher compared to existing charges.
NIT officials said, “A letter will be sent to the government seeking clarification. Till then, we will not issue demand notes under Gunthewari 2.0.”
The controversy will further delay benefits of Gunthewari 2.0 to the people. Already 15 months have passed since the government implemented the scheme.