The Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation has identified several “unauthorised” structures that have come up across Rajarhat and Salt Lake in northeast Kolkata during a recent survey, a senior official of the civic body said.
The official said a house in Salt Lake’s AE Block had been identified where the owner had constructed an extra floor on top of the two-storey structure without the required clearance from the civic body.
The civic officials have identified over a dozen “unauthorised” structures along VIP Road near Kaikhali, an area currently witnessing a boom in construction activities.
Another senior official said that according to building laws, before constructing a building, the plan of the structure has to be submitted to the civic body for clearance. Blueprints of the building and soil investigation certificates have to be submitted as well.
“Some of these buildings have even come up on ponds that have been filled up without the consent of the owners,” the official said.
The civic body official said the owner of the two-storey building in AE Block had built the extra floor without submitting the plans and the blueprints to the civic body.
“Salt Lake is a planned area and permission to add a floor depends on the plot size. We haven’t received any documents seeking permission to build an extra floor,” said the official.
Sabyasachi Dutta, chairperson of the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation, said he had raised the issue at a recent board meeting.
“We must nip this problem in the bud before it spreads across all 41 wards of the corporation. We have a ward that borders the East Kolkata Wetlands and we must be extremely careful about illegal buildings coming up there,” he told The Telegraph.
Civic officials said they had decided to paste notices on the allegedly illegal structures asking builders to visit the corporation headquarters in Salt Lake, failing which they will be pulled down.
“The builders will be served notices asking them to explain how construction was initiated without the required clearances. If they are unable to provide the necessary papers, demolition teams will move in,” the official said.
The areas along VIP Road and in 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 construction activities began after that, he said.
“There was a lack of supervision at the time of transition and developers seized the opportunity to construct multi-storeyed buildings,” he said.
