The Indian Express                  08.03.2013

AMC cuts impact fee by 90%

Faced with a lukewarm response to the state's government new law for regularisation of unauthorised buildings on payment of an "impact fee", the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) on Thursday offered to slash its charges by nearly 90 per cent.

The state government has already extended the "impact fee" deadline by another six months, till August 19, 2013.

According to the new scheme cleared by AMC's standing committee, an applicant will have to fill in just one application, testify himself and get it notarised before submitting it with necessary plan, indicating the area of the unauthorised portion. Now, the structures on road width of 4.5 metres will also be regularised.

Instead of having to regularise an entire building, the AMC has now adopted the approach of regularising individual units in the building. "We will demolish the units whose owners prefer not to fall in line even if they are part of a building where others have got their units regularised," said deputy municipal commissioner U C Padia later during a power-point presentation.

As on February 8, 2013, the AMC had received 71,000 applications but only 576 had been processed and cleared, which generated a revenue of Rs 5 crore for the AMC against the expected Rs 100 crore.