An unapproved layout is not an illegal sale. Ownership can pass perfectly well. What does not pass is the ability to use the thing you bought, and the gap between those two is where the money is lost.
The five things you lose
| What you lose | Where it comes from |
|---|---|
| The building licence | The proviso to Section 17(2B), Karnataka Town and Country Planning Act, 1961, which bars any commencement certificate or licence for buildings on sites in the layout until the final layout plan issues |
| What you build, if you build anyway | Section 17(4) lets the planning authority stop the work and, after inquiry, remove or pull down the work or restore the land to its original condition, and recover the expense under Section 17(5) |
| The A register khata | The layout was never approved, which is one of the standard reasons a property sits in the B register |
| The roads, the park and the civic amenity site | Section 17(2A) requires them to be relinquished by registered deed. Where that never happened they remain the promoter's land, and they can be sold or built on |
| Half the market on resale | Lenders read the layout position, and a buyer who needs finance cannot complete |
The road and park point is the one that surprises people
In an approved layout the internal roads and the park stop belonging to the developer the moment the relinquishment deed is registered. In an unapproved layout there is no relinquishment deed, so the strips of land between the sites remain private property in the developer's name or in his successors' names. Purchasers assume otherwise because there is tar on the ground and a gate at the entrance. Years later a boundary wall goes up across what everyone treated as a road, and the answer to who owns it is found in the revenue record rather than in the site plan the sales office handed out.
Tax receipts prove the opposite of what sellers say
Section 144(6) of the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike Act, 2020 expressly allows the corporation to tax a building in an unauthorised layout, and requires the tax on such a building to be double the tax otherwise payable, kept in a separate register. The proviso says the levy confers no right to regularise the violation and no title, ownership or legal status, and that such buildings remain liable to action. Section 144(20) then requires the acknowledgement or khata given to a taxpayer to be distinct for lawful and unlawful buildings, which is the statutory root of the A and B registers people argue about. The receipt is a record of the defect, not a cure for it.
The appeal, and the clock on it
Refusals are not the end of the road, but they are timed. Section 17(6) gives a person aggrieved by the planning authority's decision under Section 17(2) or Section 17(4) thirty days from the date of that decision to appeal to the prescribed authority, and Section 17(7) asks that authority to decide within four months of receiving the appeal. There is a parallel provision for building permission. Under Section 15(2), if the planning authority does not communicate its decision on an application within three months of the acknowledgement, the commencement certificate is deemed granted, but only where the use or development sought is in conformity with the outline development plan and the finally approved regulations. Section 15(4) preserves the power to stop work and pull down anything done in contravention. So the deeming provisions help a compliant applicant and do nothing at all for a non-compliant one.
If you are buying anyway
- Ask for the final layout plan by number and date, not for a stamped drawing
- Ask for the registered relinquishment deed for the roads, parks and civic amenity area
- Confirm the land was diverted for non-agricultural use, since an unapproved layout very often sits on unconverted land
- Compare the sanctioned plan with what is on the ground, site by site, and count the sites
- Get your lender's position in writing before you pay an advance, not after
- Check whether the property tax receipt shows the doubled rate under Section 144(6)
- Price it as what it is, and put any promise of future approval into the agreement with a consequence attached
Where the defect can be cured, curing it is a project level exercise and rarely one an individual purchaser can drive, which is set out defect by defect in our guide to B khata to A khata conversion in Karnataka. What a digitised record does and does not change is dealt with in the e-khata answer.