The Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) will complete mutation of thika properties within 15 days from the day of application, a senior official of the civic body said on Friday.
The official also said the civic body has decided to approve building plans on thika plots between a fortnight and a month from the day a plan is submitted.
The official was speaking to reporters on the sidelines of an event at the civic headquarters on Friday where mayor Firhad Hakim handed thika lease documents to two persons.
Hakim said a committee of secretaries has been formed to consider applications for lease rights from thika tenants. Thika tenants are now eligible to get lease rights — they will be identified as thika lessees — over plots on which they have lived for decades and generations.
Lease rights are granted to thika tenants based on an amendment to the West Bengal Thika Tenancy (Acquisition and Regulation) Act 2019. Earlier, these tenants had only tenancy rights, but no lease rights, over the plots where they lived.
Being identified as a lessee will allow them to obtain home loans for building new structures on the plots, something they could not access as tenants.
Before the amendment came into force, any building on a thika plot could not be taller than 9.5m (three storeys). Post-amendment, thika lessees are no longer bound by the restriction.
The lease document will have names of “bharatias” or sub-tenants, who will be identified as assignees. Once a new structure is built, the assignees will be rehabilitated in it.
“Those who live on thika plots can get the plots mutated in their name within 15 days of application,” the KMC official who spoke to this newspaper said.
The mutation certificate will be issued by the thika controller’s office at the KMC.
KMC sources had earlier said thika plots were once owned by zamindars. The government took over the ownership of these plots after the zamindari system was abolished. The tenants are those who had settled on the plots when they were owned by the zamindars. Later,the state government acknowledged them as thika tenants.
This newspaper has reported that there are about 2,000 acres of thika land across the city. In Howrah, the thika plots measure 517 acres.
Many of the structures on thika plots were built without any permission from the civic body, officials said.
The option to build a new structure without obtaining lease rights still remains. It is not mandatory for tenants to become lessees to construct a new building. But a thika tenant will be bound by the height restriction, the official said.
“We are encouraging more people to build houses on thika plots. Come and submit building plans to us. New buildings will ensure better living conditions,” Hakim said.