The impending demolition of the illegal buildings in the Campa Cola Housing Society here has taken centre stage, with the issue garnering the attention of the media as well as political leaders.
And in their desperate bid to get relief, the society’s residents even called on Congress deputy chief Rahul Gandhi.
Although, the 100-odd families have received the support of all the political parties, the ordeal has put the focus back on a larger problem.
“There are scores of residential and commercial structures here which do not have occupation certificate on account of one or more violations of the civic norms,” said former Congress MLA Yusuf Abrahani.
As per the information gleaned by activist Anil Galgali under the RTI, the Mumbai civic body does not have complete information on the structures which do not have occupation certificates – the final clearance certifying that the building has been constructed as per plan and norms.
In fact, the civic body has information only on the structures, which were issued occupation certificates from 2003-2011. And it pertains only to 13,000 odd structures, while the authorities have not bothered to compile the data regarding the several lakh other structures dotting the megapolis.
“Moreover, the civic body claims it does not even know the tally of buildings in Mumbai, let alone the other details about the buildings such as whether they are legal or not. It is not known whether it is inefficiency or corruption which is stopping the civic officials from compiling such a vital data,” said Galgali.
Nonetheless, one can get try to get the bigger picture even with the help of the partial statistics provided by the civic body.
There were 14,370 proposals received by the civic body for building construction, of which 13,313 received commencement certificate-- the approval to proceed with the construction following the approval of plan.
However, only 6,888 buildings received occupation certificates, which is 48 per cent of the total number of proposals received by the civic body. Thus 6,425 buildings did not receive occupation certificates, thereby making them illegal.
“There are several reasons why the occupation certificates can be denied and Floor Space Index(FSI) violation may one of the reasons, as in the Campa Cola case.
However, rarely does the civic body take stern action against such violators. Most of the buildings without occupation certificate have to pay more taxes and penalties,” said a civic official.
He added that in the case of Campa Cola Housing Society, the demolition notice was issued as the residents had approached the court to get water connection thus angering the civic officials.
| Full coverage State Elections 2013 Specials on: Narendra Modi | Rahul Gandhi | Sachin Tendulkar | World Chess Championship | VoXpress | Indian GP |