The Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation on Tuesday decided to expedite the process of evacuating unauthorised and illegal buildings and demolishing them following the Garden Reach building collapse.
An under-construction five-storeyed building collapsed in Garden Reach on Sunday night.
The decision to “speed up” the process was taken at a meeting at Poura Bhavan, the headquarters of Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation.
A civic official said they had identified more than 300 unauthorised buildings that have come up across all 41 wards over the past several years and will start a drive to demolish them in the coming few weeks.
“This was decided after the Garden Reach incident. We have decided to expedite the process,” said the official.
The builders and developers had been sent evacuation notices and informed that the buildings will be demolished but none of them have complied, the official said. The letters had been sent in July last year and gave the builders two months to evacuate the buildings in case they were occupied.
Civic body sources said none of the builders or promoters have complied, following which they decided to carry out the demolition drive.
“Initially two months were given for the builders to comply. Then an additional one month was given. However, this time frame, too, was not adhered to. We could not carry out demolitions of buildings that have people staying in them. They have been served fresh notices,” the official said.
Another senior civic official said these buildings were built without any clearances or permits from the civic body.
The official added: “Their building plans had not been submitted to the civic body either, and several of them have been built on water bodies that had been filled up by the builders and promoters.”
In areas under the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation, the buildings have come up in areas bordering the East Kolkata Wetlands behind Sukantanagar, in Sukantanagar off EM Bypass, Kestopur, Arjunpur, Baguiati and parts of Rajarhat, among others, said a senior official of the civic body.
Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation mayor Krishna Chakraborty said the civic body’s building department had carried out a survey.
“We have identified several such buildings and are going to take steps according to the law. It has taken time as the process to ensure evacuation of people takes time and there are several complications associated with it,” said Chakraborty.
Civic body teams have identified 322 such buildings.
A sizeable number of them are under-construction, an official of the buildings’ department said.
“The plan is to start demolishing the under-construction structures first. Those staying in illegal buildings need to be evacuated before the buildings can be razed,” said the official.
On Monday, the Salt Lake civic body demolished an illegal two-storeyed club that had come up in Nayapatti on the fringe of Salt Lake. The Calcutta High Court had ordered its demolition but civic teams had failed twice because of resistance from residents and club members.
The civic body also gets enquiries from banks for verification of the buildings when applicants seek loans to buy apartments.
“From the verification applications we receive, we regularly observe around 25 per cent of the buildings have been constructed illegally,” said an official of buildings department.
To carry out demolition drives, civic officials are coordinating with the North 24-Parganas district administration, the Bidhannagar commissionerate and the
West Bengal State Electricity Distribution Company Limited.
Areas along VIP Road, like Kestopur, Arjunpur and Baguiati, and Rajarhat had been under the erstwhile Rajarhat Gopalpur municipality before it was merged with the erstwhile Bidhannagar Municipality to form the corporation in 2015. The spurt in illegal construction activities here began after that, the official said.
“There was a lack of supervision at the time of transition and developers seized the opportunity to construct multi-storeyed buildings. A section of unscrupulous promoters also filled up water bodies in bheri areas behind Sector V and started constructing buildings illegally there,” he said.
