Illegal constructions are a scarcity in Shil an year after collapse of a building
The Municipal Corporation and locals are showing zero-tolerance to unauthorized buildings and chawls post the collapse of an illegal building at Shil Road in Mumbra.
The last year incident was shocking. High rise towers used to come up frequently and the needy would occupy them as they were sold at the rate of a tenement in a chawl. When the Adarsh Tower collapsed killing 74 people, more than 100 such high rises were under construction. Since then lessons have been learnt from the death and destruction. From that day there is a complete stop on illegal constructions there,” said Mangal Patil, a resident, who was the first to caution about the goings-on at Shil the then civic commissioner R A Rajeev.
Patil said that for contractors, politicians and civic bureaucrats the place had turned into a goldmine who worked hand-in-glove to build these illegal buildings. The contractor encroached into the vacant lands owned by the state revenue and the forest departments and finished the construction of a seven-storied building in three to four months time. The disastrous Adarsh Towers at Lucky Compound was constructed in flat four months.
“Now, things have changed for the better. Since then not a single plinth-level construction has begun. Thane Municipal Corporation (TMC) has razed as many as 14 buildings and 50-odd illegal buildings were partially pulled down in reply to a Right to Information application that I had filed. No one dared to put up a wall or fix the slab or the staircase damaged by the TMC squad even though the occupants continued to reside in those buildings,” said Patil.
Another local Sunil Alimkar said a fear in the minds of people was triggered after the deaths at Adarsh Tower.
Alimkar said, “The positive outcome of this incident is that more people are preparing documents, opening account in banks and cautiously scrutinizing if the house they intend to buy has legal sanctions. Stamp duty and registration fees are now being paid to the government, which was unimaginable a year back.”
Source: Times of India
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