Hyderabad: GHMC gives chance to convert residential buildings into commercial by paying impact fee

Hyderabad: To convert buildings for commercial purposes at the commercial corridors, the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) is giving a chance to owners who have been running commercial activities by taking residential permission. Vide GO 102 the government recently declared commercial roads, in addition to the existing commercial roads, by revising the rates of impact fee.

It authorised GHMC Commissioner DS Lokesh Kumar to grant building permissions for constructing of residential, commercial, mixed use buildings at the option of owners of the site abutting the roads, subject to collection of impact fee as per specified rates.

The fee is to be escrowed into the Strategic Nala Development Programme (SRDP) account. The existing commercial buildings located on the declared commercial roads, which have been converted from permitted residential use, shall have to pay fee, as per the prescribed rates, along with 33 percent compounding fee.

Further, the government also issued an order for allowing the activities of buildings converted into non-residential purpose, other than declared commercial roads, on payment of 1.25 to 1.5 times the impact fee and 33 per cent compounding fee at a time.

Owners/occupiers of the buildings should file a self-declaration application online through GHMC website from November 1 to 31. If the self-declaration applications are not filed on time the civic body will seize/close the buildings.

The owners have to pay 50 per cent of the impact fee and compounding fee at the time of filing applications. The reset amount can be paid before March 31, 2022. If the owners pay 100 per cent of the amount at the time of filing application the government will give 10 per cent rebate.

As the government gave the opportunity to get approval of change of building permission, an online self-declaration based change of land use application has been developed by the GHMC, wherein the commercial building can obtain a self-approval certificate of the usage of conversion.

To get the certificate the public can go to the URL https://cr.ghmc.gov.in . They have to select option on commercial usage application. After that they have to provide mobile number and OTP to validate. They have to furnish details of address of site, address for correspondence. After submitting them the site redirects payment of challan. Once the payment is confirmed they can download the provisional certificate.