Illegal colonies: LS passes bill on ownership rights

New Delhi: The Lok Sabha on Thursday passed a bill to grant ownership rights to residents of 1,731 unauthorised colonies. The National Capital Territory of Delhi (Recognition of Property Rights of Citizens in Unauthorised Colonies) Bill, 2019, was passed by a voice vote.

Moving the bill, Union minister Hardeep Singh Puri said that the process of digital mapping of 1,731 unauthorised colonies of Delhi will be completed by December 31 this year. The process to map these colonies digitally should have started in 2008, Mr Puri said. He said that though the process has been initiated now, he is confident that it will be completed by December 31 and images would be uploaded on a newly created portal. He said that more than 600 colonies have been digitally mapped so far.

The minister asserted that digital mapping is an important process before ownership rights can be granted to those living in such dwellings.

Participating in the discussion, BJP member Ramesh Bidhuri attacked successive Delhi governments for allegedly failing to extend ownership rights to people residing in unauthorised colonies here, drawing a sharp response from Congress.

Mr Bidhuri targeted various city governments. He also said that former Delhi chief minister Shiela Dikshit did not think about those people and distributed provisional certificates prior to the 2007 elections despite the fact that Congress was ruling at both the Centre and in Delhi. At this point, Congress MP Hibi Eden raised a point of order on which Lok Sabha chair A. Raja stated that he will look into the records and if found derogatory against any person, it will be expunged.

Parliamentary affairs minister Pralhad Joshi said the member was only expressing “historical views” on the important legislation. Adhir Ranjan of Congress said the BJP member is using derogatory words.