Thousands of ordinary families in Jammu and Kashmir are trapped. They own old commercial structures, houses, school buildings, hotels etc. built years or decades ago under earlier norms. When they seek permission to add a second or third storey or more, the authorities often demand that the entire existing structure be demolished first. The result is financial ruin, stalled housing and unnecessary hardship in a region already short of land and living space.
This is not a fringe problem. It is a widespread ground reality that Revenue Department, Rural Development Department and R&B Department encounter daily. The Housing & Urban Development Department’s recent invitation for public suggestions on amendments to the Unified Building Bye-Laws 2021 offers a chance to fix it.
The core reform needed is straightforward: allow conditional vertical expansion on existing structures without mandatory demolition. Permission for additional floors should be granted only when the building is certified structurally sound by a registered structural engineer, verified by the authority or an independent auditor. The addition must respect current FAR, height, setbacks, parking, fire safety and seismic norms (or fall within compoundable limits). Any unauthorised portions of the old structure must first be regularised. Owners should pay a graded one-time penalty — higher for commercial use — plus normal fees, execute an indemnity bond, and complete work within a fixed timeframe under stage-wise inspection.
Cases involving encroachment on public land, green belts, water bodies or non-compoundable violations would remain barred. A time-bound amnesty window of six to twelve months, linked to the existing Auto-DCR portal, could clear the large backlog while generating substantial revenue for the government.
Several states already operate limited versions of such schemes. Delhi periodically compounds deviations and has regularised large numbers of unauthorised colonies. Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh have run regularisation programmes that allow extra floors or deviations subject to structural safety and penalties. Courts have generally upheld planning authorities’ power to refuse permission when norms are breached, so any J&K provision must remain strictly conditional, safety-first and penalty-based rather than an open-ended right.
Other practical changes are equally urgent. Rigid insistence on large setbacks — often around 10 feet on all sides — renders small residential plots of five, six or ten marlas almost unusable. After leaving front, rear and side open spaces, little footprint remains for a liveable house. Setbacks for plots up to roughly 250–300 square metres should be rationalised on a sliding scale according to actual size and width, with limited compounding of minor deviations permitted.
Manpower shortages compound the delays. One Assistant Town Planner is frequently responsible for two or more districts. Cases languish for months while citizens make repeated visits. Cadre strength must be increased, district-level postings fixed, and strict timelines enforced. For low-risk small residential buildings, greater self-certification by registered technical persons, subject to random audit, could ease the bottleneck until staffing improves.
In most towns outside a handful of major cities, no approved Master Plan or Town Plan exists, yet the full force of the Unified Bye-Laws is applied. This creates legal and practical anomalies. Detailed plans for remaining urban local bodies should be prepared and notified within a fixed period of 12–18 months. Until then, only basic safety, structural and fire norms should apply strictly.
Finally, outdated National Highway setback norms continue to be enforced on old NH stretches that have long been bypassed by new four-lane highways and are now maintained as district roads by the R&B Department. Once a road has been formally bypassed and handed over, district-road norms — not NH norms — must apply. A clear list of such stretches should be notified so that building permission authorities and R&B offices act uniformly.
These reforms balance citizen hardship with structural safety, planned development and revenue generation. They prevent needless demolition, add to the housing stock in a seismically sensitive region, and align with the government’s own push for digital, time-bound permissions. Ordinary middle-class families who have invested their life savings in small plots deserve bye-laws that are realistic and workable, not rules that make home-building or commercial structure raising practically impossible.
The suggestions above are rooted in the lived experience of hundreds of cases that surface every year. Incorporating them would make the Unified Building Bye-Laws genuinely citizen-friendly while still protecting the larger public interest. The opportunity should not be missed.
Meraj Zargar is a Senior Revenue Official and an Author.
