Realtors get favoures, other land owners ignored

The cabinet committee on review of the capital’s Detailed Area Plan has left the applications of hundreds of affected land owners unaddressed.
Already over 3,000 landowners filed petitions seeking corrections in the DAP, in which their lands were, by mistake, shown as water bodies, flood flow zones for conservation and also as existing or proposed roads, graveyards, playgrounds and other public easement areas. 
The cabinet committee formed shortly after notifying the DAP in the official gazette in 2010, had the responsibility to address the complaints of the affected land owners before the DAP is finalized.
According to the records of the Rajdhani Unnayan Katripakkha, over 3,000 applications of individual landowners were not even placed before the review committee which held eight meetings until now. 
Affected landowners had sought corrections in the DAP so that they could build houses or use them for other purposes with approval from the Rajuk or sell them if the need arises.
The number of affected land owners would by far exceed 3,000 who had applied for the corrections until now, said affected people.
Conservationists, urban planners as well as Rajuk officials said that until now the cabinet committee on review only addressed the petitions of influential people and realtors while altering land use plan inside the areas for conservation specified in the DAP.
Centre for Urban Studies chairman Nazrul Islam said that it seems to him that the government formed the review committee to legalize unauthorized housing projects inside areas earmarked for conservation rather than 
addressing the problems created by mistake for the individual land owners.
Physician Gita Rani Hawlader said in her application that a 32-katha plot at Hazaribagh, in the capital, near the Sikder Medical College Hospital, she and others own, has been shown in the DAP as flood flow zone.
She said that she and the fellow owners discovered the mistake in the DAP when they sought Rajuk’s clearance for construction of their houses. 
Gita pointed out in her application that their land was outside the depressed flood prone areas of the capital in the cadastral, revisional and the latest city survey maps.
She also pointed out that private and government buildings had already been constructed on surrounding plots. 
Begum Tawhida Faruki of Adabor area in the capital was shocked to discover that the DAP shows by mistake that a 60 feet wide road would pass through her 39-decimal plot and the adjacent plots, on all of which buildings had been constructed long ago. 
In her application, Tawhida requested the review committee to free her plot so that she could sell it or use it for other purposes. 
Industrialist Md Aminur Rashid in his application filed on September 21 pointed out that his 206 decimal plot at Ashulia Industrial Area was shown as crop land in the DAP by mistake though factories had been built on plots surrounding it.
The mistake in the DAP, he said, was preventing him from setting up industry on his plot.
Aminur requested the review committee to allow him to build his factory on his industrial land. 
Bangladesh Institute of Planners general secretary Akhter Hossain said that as individuals’ application seeking redress remained unaddressed because they lack the clouts the housing companies have.
Housing and public works minister Mosharraf Hossain denied that he showed extra favours to the housing companies when he headed the cabinet committee for the review of the DAP for two years until March 2016. 
He repeatedly told at public functions that the DAP was causing untold suffering to landowners only because it was prepared sitting inside office rooms without paying field visits.
Urban planner Al Ameen, who took part in preparing DAP, blamed Rajuk for not addressing the problems of the affected landowners.
He also called it a serious mistake not to pay proper compensations for acquiring lands owned by individuals for development activities or earmarking them for conservation.  
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