Good news for Landour houses

MUSSOORIE: After years of waiting, people of Landour in Old Mussoorie, can heave a sigh of relief. They can now go ahead and carry out renovations of their houses, some of which are over 100 years old.
Till now, residents of this hill station were not allowed to repair or renovate their homes without undergoing a cumbersome process of securing approval.Plans for renovations had to be submitted to the Mussoorie Dehradun Development Authority (MDDA). They in turn would send a recommendation to the state forest department. However, if the forest depatment did not approve of it, the matter would go to the Union ministry of environment and forests. This also meant inordinate delays.
For years, people have been demanding that the procedure for granting permission for renovations be made simple in the hill town.
Now, the permission will be granted by the MDDA. However, only residents of Landour can avail of this facility. A decision to this effect was taken by the Supreme Court monitoring committee in Dehradun recently. The MDDA will accept and approve plans for restoration, rebuilding and repairs of Landour's old buildings, most of which were constructed during the British era.
Most of the buildings in Landour are very old some as old as the town itself. Most are multi-storeyed, rising upto eight floors. A couple of years ago, two old buildings in Landour collapsed unable to withstand heavy rains. Many buildings need to be renovated or extensively repaired in this quake-prone area. Incidentally, now, no house in Mussoorie can legally be built beyond three storeys. However, violations are galore.
All construction work in Mussoorie came under the scanner of the Supreme Court monitoring committee in 1990 after the apex court had banned limestone mining in the region earlier. The apex court set up a monitoring committee to check illegal construction in the hill station. In 1994, the Supreme Court banned all construction in the hill town.
Talking to TOI, Mussoorie's muncipal board chairman OP Uniyal said the monitoring committee, of which he is a member, considering to relax the norms even in other areas of Mussoorie as far as repair work is concerned. "We will see to it that people are not harassed unnecessarily,'' he said.