THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The state government which was forced to extend deadlines for regularisation of unauthorised constructions twice owing to low response has collected Rs 3.75 crores as regularisation fee, as per assembly records. Of the total fee collected civic bodies accounted for Rs 2.82 crores and panchayats Rs 92 lakhs.Data collected through RTI, however, show that very few unauthorised buildings were regularised in major city corporations where numerous illegalities had been reported in the past pertaining to constructions.Four corporations namely Thiruvananthapuram, Kozhikode, Kannur and Thrissur collected Rs 34 lakhs as fees, of which the capital corporation and Thrissur corporation could collect only application fee; Rs 16 lakhs and Rs 13.78 lakhs respectively.As per Kerala Municipality Building (Regularisation of Unauthorised Construction) Rules, 2018, the application fee has to be paid based on total built-up area under five categories, between 61-100 sq m, 101-200 sq m, 201-500 sq m, 501-1000 sq m and 1001 sq m and above. Application fee needs to be paid between Rs 2000 to Rs 15,000 depending upon total built up area and for buildings with 1001 square metres and above, application fee is Rs 15,000 plus Rs 25 per sq m of built up area in excess of 1000 sq m. Kochi and Kollam corporation did not respond to RTI queries filed by TOI.Not a single building was regularised in Thrissur and Trivandrum in 2018 and Kannur and Kozhikode corporation accounted for 11 regularisations. The state government had heavily relaxed norms and compounding fee with a view to encourage maximum regularisation of unauthorised constructions in the state. However, in civic bodies where violations of various nature had frequently been reported very few have come forward for regularisation indicative of the futility of the entire process.Maradu municipality which had hit headlines owing to unauthorised constructions in recent years received just three applications in 2018 and none of them were regularised.TOI collected information from 55 civic bodies out of 93 urban local bodies and data show that regularisation process was minimal in more than half of the municipalities. In many cases, not a single application was received. Alappuzha municipality received four applications; all from individual households and collected a regularisation fee of Rs 76,582. Officials admit that major violations pertaining to commercial complexes have seldom come up for regularisation in 2018. 38 civic bodies did not respond to TOI's query.In December 2018, the government had set March 2019 as the new deadline for filing applications for regularisation of unauthorised constructions. This was the second time government had been forced to revise the timeline for regularisation Earlier the timeline initially fixed as June 20 was extended to November 16 in 2018.

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