Over two days this week the Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar Municipal Corporation sent JCBs into the fields at Harsul and wiped out the boundary markings of about 1,400 residential plots. On August 31 the civic body’s anti-encroachment wing flattened the demarcation of roughly 750 plots across two layouts at Gat No. 15 and Gat No. 279, Navbharat Live reported. The next day the same team returned for about 690 more, spread over eight acres at Gat No. 275 on Jamanjyoti Road and Gat No. 61 on Kolthanwadi Road, according to Lokmat Times.

Most of the plots measured 20 feet by 30 feet. That is 600 square feet, the size at which a family on a modest income can picture owning land near the city. It is the market these layouts were built for.

What the corporation destroyed

At most of the sites there was nothing to demolish in the ordinary sense. No houses stood on them, only survey pegs, murum tracks and painted stones laying a grid across farmland. The corporation’s case is that the grid itself was the offence. Nobody converted the land to non-agricultural use, no planning authority sanctioned a layout plan, and the men selling the plots held no permission to sell them.

Municipal Commissioner Amol Edke ordered the drive and encroachment coordinator Santosh Wahule led it on the ground. The corporation has named the people it holds responsible for each layout, and it has filed an FIR over a separate parcel at Gat No. 27, where 60 to 65 permanent structures have already come up. Officials say they will serve Gunthewari notices on those who built there.

Why these buyers have no route back

Maharashtra runs a standing amnesty for settlements exactly like this. The Gunthewari Developments (Regularisation, Upgradation and Control) Act, 2001 allows a planning authority to legalise an unauthorised layout once the owner pays a compounding fee and development charges. In March 2021 the state amended the Act to cover any such development that existed as on December 31, 2020.

That date decides everything at Harsul. A grid cut into a mango orchard in 2025 or 2026 sits outside the amnesty. There is no fee that repairs it and no application to file. Whoever holds a notarised agreement for one of these rectangles owns a description of land that the planning authority does not recognise, on a survey number still recorded as agricultural. No bank will lend against it. The corporation will not sanction a building plan on it. And it cannot be sold on to anyone who checks the paperwork.

Buyers who do fall inside the cutoff should not assume relief arrives on its own. In the Nagpur Metropolitan Region about 1.5 lakh plots are still waiting, and fewer than one per cent of applicants have received regularisation, The Hitavada reported in August. The obstacle there is a rule requiring ten per cent of a layout’s plottable land to pass to the planning authority for public amenities. Once the original developer has sold every plot and moved on, no one is left who can hand that ten per cent over.

What to check before you pay

If you are looking at cheap land on the city’s edge, four documents settle the question:

• The non-agricultural (NA) order for the survey or gat number, issued by the collector.
• The layout plan carrying the sanction stamp of the municipal corporation or the relevant planning authority.
• A current 7/12 extract for that gat number, read against the plot you are shown.
• A registered sale deed. A notarised agreement or a receipt on stamp paper transfers nothing.

A price far below the ready reckoner rate for the locality is a warning rather than a bargain. The discount is the missing paperwork.

What to watch next

Harsul is unlikely to be the last stop. The corporation has run repeated drives along the Harsul stretch this year, from encroachment clearance near the lake for a PM Awas Yojana site to this week’s layouts, and its officers have said they will keep going after those who develop and sell plots without permission. The test is whether the campaign reaches the developers rather than the markings they leave behind. Erasing a grid costs the corporation a day of JCB hire. It costs the person who paid for one of those rectangles their savings.

Sources: Lokmat Times, Navbharat Live, The Hitavada

This report was compiled and written with AI assistance from publicly reported sources, and reviewed for accuracy.