The Hindu 07.09.2013
Corporation plans digitised monitoring of OSR lands
The lands are meant for creation of public utility infrastructure
In an effort aimed at ending the abuse or usurping of Open Space Reservation (OSR) lands, the Corporation is creating a digitised data bank of layouts and OSR lands.
At present, whenever an OSR land needs to be identified, the officials seek time to refer to the layout plan, files.
This was proving to be a time-consuming affair. Law demands earmarking 10 per cent of the land as OSR whenever a layout plan was submitted for approval of a layout with more than 37 cents of land. OSR is meant for creation of public utility infrastructure such as parks, shops, parking space and community hall.
Corporation Commissioner G. Latha and Deputy Commissioner S. Sivarasu have planned to use the Autocad method for digitising the layout maps and indicate the OSR lands there. As on date, Corporation records indicate existence of 1,180 OSR lands but practically there would have to be more than 1,500 lands, official sources said.
Town Planning Department officials have been instructed to identify and list the number of OSR lands on the basis of one ward per week.
With 100 wards in five zones, the officials were confident of completing the task of identifying the layouts and the OSR lands therein within 20 weeks.
The process of identifying the layouts and the OSR lands will translate into placing of boards by the Corporation cautioning people to refrain from buying or selling such lands. Next step would be to upload the same in the website and indicate the OSRs, so that the prospective buyers could exercise some caution and refrain from buying OSR lands.
Next step would be to resort to removal of encroachments to restore the OSR lands and ensure their availability for creation of infrastructure for public utility purposes.
Once the database is created, Corporation would get into a mode for restoring these lands encroached upon by land sharks over a period of time, officials said.