50:50 scam of MUDA: How and why of it

By S. Arunkumar, Sr. Advocate

Mysuru Urban Development Authority (MUDA) was created to form residential layouts and infrastructure for the city of Mysuru and later, handover the same to Mysuru City Corporation (MCC) for maintenance.

From the past 20 years, Muda has forgotten the very reason for which it was formed and has become only an authority to facilitate developments only of private land developers and not to develop and distribute sites to awaiting applicants who are nearly 1,00,000 in numbers. For some, the wait is 40 years for an allotment.

MUDA, of late is framing rules in a way to benefit the private developers and land grabbers and not for sincere applicants awaiting.

Initially when Muda used to acquire land from farmers and other landowners, it used to compensate them, the land losers, at prevailing market value for the land. Later, when the Mysuru City saw the real estate boom 2005 onwards, land developers started purchasing land in and around Mysuru

Muda was not getting land at a break-even price as the land developers started demanding upset price. Though MUDA had all the powers to acquire the said land, instead of exercising its powers, Muda started clearing change of land files of the same developers from agriculture to residential land and created a situation where it was unable for MUDA to acquire the said land of the developer, as it was converted into a residential land or sites.

When Muda was unable to acquire the said land at break even price, it came out with the idea of handing over a portion of the developed land to the person from whom it was acquired. Initially, it was 60 percent of the developed land for Muda and 40 to the owner of the land. Subsequently in the year 2015 it became 50:50.

Any law which comes into force is Prospective in nature and not Retrospective, unless specifically expressed. In the case of MUDA, all laws are prospective in nature.

In the said context if any land is acquired by MUDA, the laws prevailing at the time of Acquisition has to be applied for compensation; Likewise, if land is acquired in late 1990s the land value at the time has to be given as compensation and if delayed, it has to be accumulated with Interest, which is very clear in the Land Acquisition Act. Still, if there is any dispute, the aggrieved party has to approach the Honourable Courts for remedy.

But, what is shocking is, for land acquired before 2000 and before the law of 50:50 came into existence, instead of giving compensation under prevailing law at the time of taking possession of such land, sites are distributed to land losers in prime locations of all 4 stages of Vijayanagar, Dattagalli, R.T. Nagar and other layouts where the rate is between Rs. 6,000/sq.ft. and Rs.15,000/sq.ft. This is blatant  violation  of Law.

The Deputy Commissioner has written 17 letters to MUDA from 08.02.2023 to 09.11.2023 and finally to the Urban Development Authority, Government of Karnataka on 27.11.23. The Deputy Commissioner should have brought the irregularities to the knowledge of the Ministry of Urban Development immediately, but writes when all the valuable sites of Muda were distributed illegally. The Board meetings were called almost every month, when the board meeting should have taken place at least once in 3 months. The main agenda of these meetings were to distribute valuable sites under 50:50 scheme to beneficiaries illegally.

Before 2020 there were around 12,000 intermediate and corner sites in all the 4 stages of Vijayanagar, Dattagalli, R.T. Nagar and other areas of Mysuru. But today more than 8,000 sites have been given illegally under the 50:50 scam.