High Court stays BRS, LRS Scheme in Telangana: The High Court of Judicature at Hyderabad on Monday issued orders staying the process of the recently announced regularization of buildings and layouts (BRS & LRS) in Hyderabad.

Hearing a petition filed by the Forum for Good Governance opposing the ongoing regularization of buildings and layouts, the High Court issued the interim order halting the procedure till further directions.

High Court stays BRS, LRS Scheme in Telangana

However, the government can receive applications from builders for the regularization of their buildings and layouts pending a final decision, it added. M Padmanabha Reddy, secretary of the Forum for Good Governance, said,

“The GHMC Act is amended by a GO which is a violation of rules. The Act can be amended only through legislation. Secondly, the government had come out with a one-time penalization scheme in 2008, it cannot be twice.” He further said, “There are over 50,000 unauthorized houses in the GHMC limits if action is not taken the city’s infrastructure would be affected.”

High Court’s order came as yet another blow to builders, who violated rules with unapproved constructions all over the city. The scheme was not only aimed at filling the government coffers with crores of rupees in the form of penalty levied on the builders, but also serves the ruling party’s political purposes in the coming GHMC elections.

Thousands of owners are trying to get their buildings and layouts regularized to avoid any legal issues in future.

After the announcement of the scheme, thousands of building owners and builders filed applications to the GHMC for regularization of their unapproved constructions.

While the certified municipal engineers started the process of measuring built-up area of the buildings and layouts, the civil engineering institutions and architects collected handsome amounts from the building owners and builders.

With the High Court’s interim stay on the BRS and LRS schemes, thousands of applicants remained in a quandary. The Forum for Good Governance argued that the government’s liberal stand on the illegal buildings will damage the city’s overall layout in the long run and pointed out that while the government claims to make Hyderabad a global city, how can it regularize the buildings constructed in a haphazard way. The case has been adjourned for further hearing.