Deccan Chronicle 26.12.2013
Most of state’s urban slums on private lands

Hyderabad: While
Andhra Pradesh has the second largest slum population in the country
after Maharashtra, government surveys show that about 60 per cent of
urban slums in the state are located on privately owned land.
Interestingly,
the National Sample Survey Office report states that half of these
slums have been recognised by the government as “notified” slums despite
them being located on privately owned lands.
According to the
NSSO, notified slums are “areas notified as slums by the concerned state
governments, municipalities, corporations, local bodies or development
authorities”.
The NSSO report states that 60 per cent of all urban
slums, both notified and non-notified, in the state are on private
lands while about 58.7 per cent of “notified” slums are located on
privately-owned lands.
Officials, however, say that legislations
allow for the government to notify slums even if they are located on
private lands. Different states have different definitions of notified
slums. The Andhra Pradesh Slum Improvement (Acquisition of Land) Act
empowers the government to notify “any” land as “slum area” when it is
satisfied that the area is a source of danger to public health, safety
by reason of being low lying, insanitary or squalid.
“The
notification of slums is basically under the Slum Improvement Act. There
are two stages of notification, preliminary and final. So even it is a
privately owned land, the government can notify it. The person will
always try to vacate and such areas are always stuck in litigation,” a
senior official of the Revenue department said.
“It is still a
difficult issue. Many such cases are pending in land grabbing and other
courts,” the official added. The NSSO report also added that only about
40 per cent of the urban slums benefitted from projects like the
Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) in the state.
However,
the state is now trying to bring in legislation to cover such projects.
“The Act is still in draft form. Till now all these projects were only
Government Orders but with this Act, they will be covered under law,” a
senior government official said.