Families earning less than ₹3 lakh a year will be given free house site pattas in the Chennai, Tambaram, and Avadi municipal corporation limits, if they have encroached upon up to one cent of land or the actual area of encroachment, whichever is less.

In the 18 other municipal corporations, 138 municipalities, and 490 town panchayats, the permissible extent of land encroached upon for free house site pattas is two cents or the actual area.

If the land encroached is beyond one cent or two cents, the prospective beneficiaries can still possess up to one more cent, for which they will have to pay the value fixed by the government. In effect, the maximum extent of encroached land, which comes under the present regularisation scheme, is two cents in Chennai, Tambaram, and Avadi, and three cents in the other urban local bodies. The families with more than ₹3 lakh in annual income are required to meet the cost of the entire land occupied by them.

In rural areas, three cents will be allowed free for the families having an annual income of up to ₹3 lakh.

These norms are part of the guidelines issued by the Tamil Nadu Revenue and Disaster Management Department a few days ago to implement the regularisation of residential encroachments and the issue of free house site pattas. The issue of the guidelines follows the decision taken at a Cabinet meeting, chaired by Chief Minister M.K. Stalin, last month to give approval for the regularisation scheme.

About 86,000 persons are expected to be covered under the scheme, which is applicable to “unobjectionable poromboke lands” and four types of objectionable poromboke lands: cart track, “kalam”, burial ground, and “thoppu”.

In the case of Chennai and the belt areas in Tiruvallur, Chengalpattu, and Kancheepuram districts, the encroachers should have built houses and be residing there for more than 10 years, and in the remaining areas, over five years.

The guidelines make it clear that commercial encroachments, fully or partly, should not be regularised. The scheme is only meant for residential purposes. A preliminary enumeration has been carried out with regard to the encroachments. After collecting application forms from the prospective beneficiaries, field officials will survey the identified land parcels, check the details furnished in the applications, assess the number of eligible families, and prepare layout sketches and sub-division records, according to a senior official of the Revenue Department.