‘Illegal buildings force Delhiites to live unhealthy’
OF AN ESTIMATED 44.5 MILLION STRUCTURES IN DELHI, AT LEAST 90% HAVE ONE KIND OF VIOLATION OR ANOTHER, THE HIGH COURTAPPOINTED EXPERT PANEL’S REPORT SAID
NEW DELHI: An expert panel informed the Delhi high court that the city will have to pay a huge price in the form of “unhealthy and unhygienic” living as 90% of the buildings here had some form of building by-law violations.
A three-member expert panel, set up by the high court to look into illegal constructions, held the government and the civic bodies responsible for the “current mess”.
“The city will pay a huge price in unhealthy and unhygienic living for the generations to come,” the panel said.
Of an estimated 4-4.5 million structures in Delhi, it can be said that at least 90% have one kind of violation or another, the panel’s report said.
“The violations range from construction without sanctioned plans to construction on open lands marked in layout/location plan as belonging to the municipal corporations of Delhi or the Delhi government,” the panel has said.
The court on May 16 had appointed former CBI director DR Karthikeyan, former India Habitat Centre (IHC) director RMS Liberhan and retired district judge Ravinder Kaur as members of the committee.
It had directed them to inspect the properties of all the three municipal bodies here and file a report in six weeks.
The report said the problem was not just confined to unauthorised colonies but also present in the planned ones, apart from urban villages whose boundaries are not permanently defined “and the regularised colonies whose legacies are illegal and in a sense, self-perpetuating”.
It said the committee went around the city and saw that in an area where there is supposed to be no construction at all, there was a resident population of 1.5 million living in structures and shelters of various sizes.
It also said some settlements were even approved by the government. “If the government and its agencies are violators of the zonal plans, who will come to the rescue of law enforcement,” it added.
It has said that unless the MCD, as the owners of the public spaces, exercise control and supervision on these areas, they will be lost to the “unscrupulous”.