The Times of India  13.08.2010

CHENNAI: The trend of re-developing old TNHB apartments is growing but the exercise is riddled with hurdles, mostly caused by the original promoter the Tamil Nadu Housing Board.

Citing flimsy reasons, the TNHB has been fleecing owners approaching it for a no-objection certificate for re-development. Till 2000, it issued sale deeds without properly conveying the rights over the undivided share of land (UDS) to owners. In effect, the buyers own only the footprint of the complexes and have no ownership rights over the thoroughfare, car park and surrounding play area. The Board never obtained even a patta for the land for transferring it to the owners.

For re-development, the CMDA insists on owners/builders obtaining orientation sketch and NOC from the TNHB and patta from tehsildar. The applicant, who has to produce orientation sketch before revenue officials for patta, first pays 10% of the land's guideline value (running into several lakhs in most cases) for the sketch and NOC. "When the Board recovered the entire cost of the project land cost, development charges, cost of construction and overheads from the buyers at the time of sale, there is no justification in demanding more money from the owners. The CMDA should approve projects without insisting on an NOC," said P V Shanmugam, MD, Kgeyes, who has re-developed 12 TNHB projects.

The TNHB in the past had filled water bodies and promoted projects over them without reclassifying it as residential land. "It is now left to the apartment owners to get it reclassified," said Shanmugam.

S Sankararaman, whose apartment in Tiruvanmiyur is being re-developed, says the project, started in May 2008, got delayed because of the TNHB and CMDA delaying NOC and approval. "I am very happy about the new building. But I had to wait for a long time," he said.

D P Yadav, MD of TNHB, said: "It is the Board's decision to insist on NOC and collect money in cases where the UDS is not conveyed."

The same Board had decided in August 2009 to do away with issuing NOC for re-development of its apartment complexes. The decision was retracted recently.

A senior housing department official said: "Collecting extra money from apartment owners is unfair. People in authority have long forgotten the fact that the TNHB was set up with the objective of providing affordable housing for all. What it does now amounts to fleecing."

V Jaggannathan, MD of Ramaniyam, said, "Going by the Housing Board's logic, if footprints of the apartment complexes alone have been sold to owners, nobody can enter their house without trespassing Board's land. We have no other option than approaching the court for remedy. The TNHB did a fine work in promoting layouts and it flopped miserably while promoting apartments," he added.