Chandigarh, August 5: Haryana Cabinet which met under the Chairmanship of Chief Minister, Sh. Manohar Lal held here today accorded approval for a proposal to amend Section 14 of the Act, omit Section 16 of the Act and substitute a new Section 17 in the Act in terms of rule 37 read with entry 9 in the Schedule of the Rules of Business of the Government of Haryana, 1977. This Act may be called the Haryana Shehri Vikas Pradhikaran (Amendment) Act, 2021.

The said amendments have been done with a view to ensure that the power of resumption is used properly as a last resort and further to ensure that this power is exercised with due responsibility, it is considered desirable that power of resumption, forfeiture, imposition of penalty and recovery may be exercised by officers having sufficient experience and knowledge of law.

The existing section 16 of the Act empowers the Estate officer to impose a penalty not exceeding the amount recoverable from the transferee which means he has absolute discretion and said power may be subjected to misuse.

Therefore, to remove the discretion, it is proposed that the penalty amount may be fixed at 50 percent of the recoverable amount.

In the existing section 17 of the 'Act, there is a long procedure prescribed and four notices are required to be issued and served before a site is resumed. This also leads to procedural delay, and there is a need to shorten the process of decision-making in resumption.

Similarly, it is also essential that the period of delay which can be condoned in filing an appeal or revision petition is prescribed. It is felt that there is a necessity to include the provision that there will be no power of review with appellate and revisional authority.

This will help in not re-opening of settled matters and curb abuse of legal process. In view of above, it has become necessary that Section 16 of the Act is omitted and new Section 17 is substituted. Hence, it is proposed that powers of resumption, forfeiture, imposition of penalty and recovery under new Section 17 of Act be bestowed upon the Administrator of respective Zones in place of Estate Officer concerned. The power to hear the appeal under section 17 (5) and 17 (7) of Act, which was delegated to Administrator of respective Zones be withdrawn and appeals henceforth be heard only by the Chief Administrator.