New guidelines issued for clearance of pending LRS applications

Telangana government streamlines Layout Regularisation Scheme process with online tool, three levels of scrutiny, and special drive.

The Telangana government has issued guidelines to streamline the process for clearing the applications under the Layout Regularisation Scheme announced in 2020. A special drive will be taken up from the first week of August to clear all the pending applications. An online tool designed by the Centre for Good Governance will help to simplify and streamline the process so that the Revenue and Irrigation departments are kept in loop, and no plots are regularised on water bodies and government lands, the memo issued by the Municipal Administration and Urban Development department said.

As per the new guidelines, there will be three levels of scrutiny and approval for regularisation of a plot and four levels for the layout. System based filtration will be done by the CGG at Level Zero, which includes preclusion of prohibitory properties. The LRS applications will be clustered survey number wise and village wise, and each cluster will be given a unique ID. In case of prohibitory properties, an auto generated message about shortfall will be sent to the applicant, who will be given a chance to re-submit the application with documentary proof. The list of applications filtered under prohibitory category will be shared with the office of the Inspector General of Registration and Stamps so that registrations are barred on the properties.

At Level One, field verification will be done by a multi-disciplinary team of officials which would include revenue inspector, assistant engineer from Irrigation, and Town Planning supervisor among others. The team will scrutinise the applications against the objectionable lands, including Waqf properties, endowment/inam properties, assigned lands, ceiling lands, court disputes, evacuee properties, FTL lands, nalas, lakes, tanks, heritage buildings and Defence lands. Separate logins will be available to each department on a customised mobile app to fill the checklist and enter the geocoordinates of the plot. Field verification should be completed in three months’ time.

The multidisciplinary team may either recommend/reject/ seek additional information from the applicant. One % of the applications which have cleared Level One processing will be sent to the Tahsildar concerned for random verification.

At Level 2, the application will move to the Town Planning head of the Municipality or corporation or the relevant authority. There, the applications will be scrutinised for access road width, Master Plan provisions, zoning regulations, open spaces and other technical and planning parametres. Fee intimation letters will be sent in respect of applications which are in full shape. Rejected applications will be forwarded to Level 3, which involves scrutiny by Municipal Commissioners or equivalent authorities.

Applications for approval of layouts will be forwarded to Level 4, where they will be verified by Additional Collector (Local Bodies) in the districts, or city planners or Director, Planning in GHMC and HMDA as the case may be.