HYDERABAD: The Greater Hyderabad
Municipal Corporation (GHMC) is in a fix. On one hand, it has rejected
28,000 Building Penalisation Scheme (BPS) applications, while on the
other hand it has no money to refund penal amount collected from
applicants whose applications were rejected.

Nearly 28,000 of
2.03 lakh applications were rejected by the civic body as structures
came up on government land, municipal land, open spaces, parks, lake
beds and play grounds.

Though ineligible applications were rejected one-and-half years ago and most of them were intimated about it, the GHMC
has not yet refunded the penal amount of about Rs 25 crore. Another
34,000 applications are also being treated as rejected as owners paid
only a part of the penal amount.

The corporation is unable to refund money as it has diverted the BPS
penal amount for its projects. The BPS had fetched about Rs 678 crore
to the GHMC. While the corporation received Rs 298 crore as initial
payment for the BPS, it netted another Rs 380 crore during clearance of
the applications.

Incidentally, the corporation had not
refunded penal amount to about 5,500 applicants whose applications were
rejected during the previous Building Regularisation Scheme ( BRS), a scheme similar to BPS, in 1998.

As per the municipal administration and urban development (MA&UD)
department instructions on BPS, the GHMC was supposed to maintain a
special escrow account for BPS penal amount. However, the corporation
diverted the entire amount for various schemes as it had been facing
financial crisis.

Officials admit that unless and until the
initial amount they received from rejected applicants is refunded, the
civic body has no authority to demolish the structures, which means
rejected applicants face no demolition threat immediately.

“As
of now, the corporation will not refund the penal amount to the rejected
applicants. We have decided to impose additional property tax over
their regular tax till the structure is demolished,” GHMC chief city
planner GV Raghu told TOI.

The last date for processing the BPS
applications had expired on December 31, 2010 and the GHMC cannot
regularise any more applications. Nearly, 34,000 owners have to clear
their BPS dues to the corporation which might fetch another Rs 100
crore.

GHMC officials said the maximum number of pending
applications were in L B Nagar and Gaddiannaram circle, where 5,141
applicants have to clear their dues followed by Malkajgiri circle where
4,738 applicants have to clear the dues.

With the deadline over, the GHMC officials have started levying 25 per cent additional property tax.