BENGALURU: The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) Chief Commissioner Gaurav Gupta’s decision on resurvey of all dilapidated and vulnerable buildings in the city is a strategy “to buy or rather waste time”, according to an officer from the disaster management cell.
The officer said Palike officials are evading accountability by not disclosing what action they have taken on a report prepared in 2019. The very fact that they are not sharing details of the survey indicates foul play. The commissioner should instead act upon the previous report and not ask for another one. He should also take stern action against officials who have not done their job, the official suggested.
“If someone had died in the building collapse in the last two incidents, would the government have suspended the engineers for dereliction of duty? This has never been done. This is tantamount to murder as due diligence was not done by the engineer while issuing occupancy certificate and approving the building plan. The rules were allowed to be violated and hence, the buildings collapsed. But all that the government would have done is given a compensation, and at the most, transferred the commissioner,” he rued.
The officer of the disaster management cell, which works with the BBMP, was reacting to the Chief Commissioner’s direction on Wednesday to engineers, zonal and joint commissioners to conduct a re-survey of all dilapidated and vulnerable buildings in the city and submit a report in 15 days.
The Palike chief made the announcement after holding a meeting with the officials, seeking details of the 2019 survey report where it was listed that there were 185 such buildings, and notices were issued to 175 and 10 had been demolished.
Gupta on Wednesday also admitted that since most buildings, especially government ones, were not covered, like the one which collapsed on Tuesday, a re-survey has been ordered. “What has happened to the notices issued? What follow-up work was done? It is not known. A re-survey means brushing aside the exercise done in the past and giving leeway to erring engineers and town planning officials,” the officer stressed.
Officials of the diaster management cell also pointed out that a state disaster management plan is already in place. As per this, the chief of the municipal corporation should head a department issuing building construction approvals. But, in Bengaluru, approval has to be obtained from separate agencies, while none of them work in tandem.
“At present, though the BBMP claims to have a final say, it is not so on the ground. The fire department does not follow the BBMP engineering norms and the same is the case with BESCOM and BWSSB,” the official said.