CHENNAI : The High Court-appointed monitoring committee has directed the Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority to prepare a position paper in four weeks' time on the extent and nature of development control rule violations by commercial multi-storeyed buildings in the city.

According to CMDA estimates, there are around 32,000 applications that have been filed for regularisation. This excludes the applications filed with other local bodies.

Based on the details provided by CMDA, the committee would take a suitable course of action, said member M.G. Devasahayam. He said the committee, which met for the first time at the CMDA office on Wednesday, would take up regularisation of commercial buildings based on the priority established by a High Court order in August 2006. The court order, said Mr. Devasahayam, has made it clear that buildings that were completed before February 28, 1999 and amongst them those applications preferred before June 30, 2002 alone will be considered for regularisation.

Meanwhile, a sub-committee was constituted to look into the methods of demolition and provide technical expertise to CMDA. It would help CMDA decide on efficient and safe methods to demolish as well as identify agencies to execute it. Currently, the Authority has no trained personnel at its disposal for undertaking demolition work and had been hiring workers on a contract basis. Lack of personnel has been cited as the cause of delay in executing demolition work in the past. At the next meeting, to be held in a fortnight, the committee would look into applications for regularisation filed by residential buildings that were constructed in violation of DC rules.

Subsequently, the committee would also aim to identify professional builders of illegal multi-storied and special buildings and work out how to penalise them, as directed by High Court.

It had ordered that the amount collected should be used to "compensate the unwary purchasers," while hearing a batch of petitions seeking to regularise several buildings constructed after 1999 in violation of rules.

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