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BDA makes former Navy officer run around for promised site

Last Updated 25 June 2015, 18:44 IST

A former Indian Navy officer, B S Laxmi- kanth, has been made to run around and wait for years for a site he tried to purchase from the Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) in the Arkavathi Layout. 

Despite waiting for nine years, Laxmikanth hasn’t yet got the site. He is not sure he will get it, though the BDA assured him he was eligible for one. 

Laxmikanth applied for a site in 2004 and got an allotment letter in 2006 which stated that he was eligible for the site. He was allotted site number 171, a 40x60 feet plot in the fifth block of the Arkavathi layout. In June the same year, he got a plan approved for construction on the site and its occupation. He paid tax regularly and all the No Objection Certificates (NOCs) were in place. 

“In October 2006, when I went for construction, the original land owners objected on the grounds that they were yet to be compensated. At that time, money was the only compensation which the BDA had paid them and allowed me to go ahead with construction. But the owners objected again and, in 2008, went to court seeking higher compensation. The Supreme Court ruled that 40 per cent of the developed land would have to be given to the land owners. The BDA asked me to wait. In 2010, it wrote to me stating that my land had been given away to the land owners as it had to give them the freedom to choose land anywhere. It said they had chosen my site. Therefore, the site had to be given away to the land owners. Then in 2011, the BDA told me that I would be eligible for an alternative site. My original site just disappeared,” Laxmikanth recalled.

Allotment letter

In 2014, Laxmikanth got a letter from the BDA, notifying him that he had been allotted site number 399 in the first block of Arkavathi Layout. 

“The property was registered in my name. When I decided to seek khata, to my utter shock, they said that the site had been allotted to another land owner and that it was registered in his name. So the same land had been registered twice—in two names. They gave me a site that was already registered in somebody else’s name.” 

Laxmikanth said he approached the BDA again, saying he was yet to get a site despite being allotted one.

The BDA then wrote to the executive engineer concerned, in RT Nagar, who replied that the site allotted to Laxmikanth was already registered in somebody else’s name and he wasn’t eligible for the same. 

The RT Nagar office recommended that Laxmikanth be given an alternative site. “Till date, I haven’t received the allotment letter and I don’t know if I’ll get a site. This is the third time I will be allotted a site and the second time an alternative site, if any. I am keeping my fingers crossed and hope at least this time I would be offered a site,” he said, in a voice mixed with hope and dismay. 

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(Published 25 June 2015, 18:44 IST)

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