A walk around Garden Reach and the violations stare in the face.
No space between two buildings, tall buildings along narrow lanes and stagnant water in elevator shafts. In buildings that still stand in Azhar Molla Bagan, violations are brazen.
All of them are within a whispering distance of the five-storey allegedly illegal structure that collapsed on Sunday night and killed at least 10 people.
On Tuesday, the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) issued notices to the occupants of five buildings in Azhar Molla Bagan.
A senior official said the buildings had come up in violation of rules. It might be that they did not have a building permit, he said.
“We have served them notices because the structures are illegal,” said the official.
Structural engineers inspected a building that has tilted and needs to be pulled down. “It has to be razed, but the demolition can start only after the debris from the site of collapse is removed,” said the official.
The Telegraph walked around the lanes in the area.
KMC engineers who were in the area or shown pictures of many of the buildings confirmed the violations.
Two five-storey buildings, less than 100m from the collapse site, are standing with barely one-foot gap between them.
“This is a violation. According to the KMC Building Rules, the gap between two five-storey buildings has to be at least 9.5ft,” said an official.
A series of three- and four-storey buildings have come up along a lane not more than 8ft wide.
An empanelled architect of the KMC said buildings along an 8ft-wide lane should not have more than two storeys.
Most of the buildings in the neighbourhood with three, four or five storeys have come up in the last 15 years or so, said a shopkeeper in the locality.
A KMC official said a search on Google Earth maps showed multiple huts with tiled roofs in the area a little more than a decade ago. The statement corroborates the shopkeeper’s statement.
Wiser after the tragedy, several KMC officials said on Tuesday that one look at the buildings shows that almost none could have a building permit from the KMC.
“The civic body can never approve such structures. They have been built either without any building permit or with a permit for one or two storeys but had more floors added illegally,” the official said.
A resident of the area told The Telegraph that they were aware of many illegal buildings — “old and new” — in the area, but no one dared to complain. If anyone lodged a complaint, men working for the builders would thrash him.
The death of so many people may have changed the local mood to some extent but it is also true that in several pockets in Kolkata, a section of residents resists attempts to demolish illegal structures.
Pockets in Garden Reach do not look like they have a civic body at all.
Many buildings had water accumulated inside, including in the elevator shaft. In under-construction buildings, builders are supposed to ensure that water does not accumulate in elevator shafts to prevent breeding of mosquitoes. The KMC is supposed to penalise such offenders.
A shopkeeper told this newspaper that many buildings did not have electricity meters because the builders left midway without completing the structures.
So, who provides power to them? Many residents are allegedly stealing electricity from neighbouring houses.
Kolkata mayor Firhad Hakim, who is also the local MLA, and local councillor Shams Iqbal have publicly said they were unaware of the violations.
