Civic body records 71% rise in collection of regularization fee

Thiruvananthapuram: With the state government relaxing the timelines for the regularization of unauthorized constructions, the civic body has recorded a 71% increase in the collection of regularization fees between 2021-22 and 2022-23, according to budget documents.
The revised budget estimates for 2022-23 put the collection figures from the regularization fee at Rs 4.5 crore which is the highest amount so far collected as the regularization fee in a fiscal by the civic body.
Collection from regularization fees has been steadily on the rise in the city; growing from Rs 1.39 crore in 2018-19 to Rs 2.61 crore in 2021-22. The collection dropped once in 2020-21; that was primarily due to the pandemic-induced lockdown.
In 2022, the state government had amended the Kerala Municipality Act and revised the timeline from which owners of unauthorized constructions could apply for regularization.
While it was earlier mandated that only those unauthorized constructions built before July 31, 2017, could be regularized, the amendment in the act revised this timeline to November 7, 2019. This made it possible for all those unauthorized constructions to be brought under the process of regularization.
Earlier, the government had revised the timeline from 2013 to 2017 through a similar amendment.
Between 2018 and 2021, the state government had extended the time limit for filing the application for regularization of unauthorized constructions seven times. Till December 2020, the applicants for regularization of unauthorized constructions got 1,046 days in total since the first notification was issued by the government on February 20, 2018.
Even when the civic body recorded a phenomenal increase in the collection of regularization fees, the audit report had posed doubts over the actual numbers.
The audit report for 2020-21 prepared by the local fund audit department notes that the audit was unable to crosscheck details regarding unauthorized constructions because the corporation did not make it available.
The details of unauthorized constructions in the city recorded before April 1, 2020 under the main office and zonal office, number of buildings that were assigned UA (unauthorised) number in 2020-21, number of buildings regularised, number of buildings that were denoted as UA and not as on March 2021 were sought by the audit department.
However, none of these details were made available by the city corporation.
The report notes that an audit enquiry note was given pertaining to these details in July 2022, however, information was not furnished by the civic body.
The audit recommends in the report that in order to check the veracity of claims regarding income through UA tax, tax assessment, regularisation, and issuance of building permits, it has to be subjected to audit and the council has to intervene in ensuring that these processes get audited.
Around Rs 2.6 crore have been estimated as lapsed due to delays in placing the demand and collecting the tax from unauthorized constructions, the report says.