Gujarat govt regularises 600 residential encroachments

In 2016, the Gujarat government had come out with with an ordinance — Possession of certain Lands of Excess Vacant Land Vested in the State Government (under the Urban Land Ceiling and Regulation Act 1976) Ordinance, 2016 — which was aimed at regularising all residential properties built on government land. These properties had no clear titles.

“Under this new law, so far we have received applications from 11,000 families.. These are families who have been living on land that the government had got by the way of Urban Land Celing Act. They had no titles. In any way, this land was intended to be distributed among the poor and the lower-middle class for the purpose of housing. So by and large, the people who have been given the orders have been living in houses that are 50-70 square meters in size,” the official said.

“Out of the six cities, only Bhavnagar had no residual issues in terms of encroachment or invalid possessionof land,” he added. Over 70,000 families living in these five cities are expected to benefit from regularisation of their houses that have been built on 33.88 lakh square meters of government land that falls under the ULC Act.