ULCA likely to fetch Rs 250cr for M'rashtra

Maharashtra chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh's review of 185 cases, where land owners were given erroneous exemptions under the Urban Land Ceiling Act (ULCA), is expected to bring in revenues of around Rs 250 crore to the state government.

Land owners were wrongly given the exemption in 185 cases by the ULC department officials, by making erroneous interpretation of the judgement given by the Apex court in the Atia Begum case or some clauses in the Act itself, according to a senior official in the chief minister's office.

It may be recalled that the Maharashtra government had signed an MoU with the Centre to get grants under the National Urban Renewal Mission (NURM) project. One of the important conditions of the MoU is that the state should repeal the ULCA by March 2008.

The state government, however, dillydallied the decision to repeal by almost a year. Now, after receiving a stern warning from the Centre, if the state government still fails to repeal the Act during the winter session, the Centre would withhold all the grants under NURM, excluding water supply projects, till the Act is repealed.

Having received a warning from the Centre, the state government had put the ULCA repeal Bill on the first week's agenda of the winter session.

However, it is trying to take possession of whatever excess land declared under ULCA or getting funds in lieu of the land, before the Act gets repealed.

As part of this exercise, the chief minister reviewed 185 cases from Pune, Nashik and Thane on Tuesday.