Illegal floors: Hundreds of residents fear demolition

140 Mumbai families could be thrown on the streets after living there for 20 years

mumbai — Hundreds of desperate residents in the posh, Campa Cola compound in Worli in central Mumbai were anxiously awaiting some kind of relief on Sunday, just 24 hours before the Bombay Municipal Corporation initiates demolition of 35 floors in seven buildings.

While some residents continued with their indefinite hunger strike, others appealed to top politicians including local MPs, MLAs and civic councillors. They had also met Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan, who had promised to find out a legal option. However, the chances of the Maharashtra government issuing an ordinance to regularise the illegal floors appeared bleak on Sunday.

The Supreme Court had in May refused to stay the demolition of the illegal floors in the housing complex, but had given the residents five months to vacate the premises. About 140 flat occupants face the prospects of being thrown out on the streets from apartments that they have occupied for nearly 20 years.

The 18,000 square metre plot of land on which the nine buildings were developed belonged to Pure Drinks, a soft-drink bottler, which shut down its bottling plant and converted the land to residential use in 1980. The Bombay Municipal Corporation (BMC) allowed a developer to put up nine buildings of five floors each, with total builtup area of 186,000 sq ft.

However, the developer constructed seven buildings, many soaring 15 to 20 floors high, and blatantly violating the civic rules. Surprisingly, despite the outright violations, which continued for a decade, the BMC and its officials failed to take action. The developer also sold flats to buyers, many of who moved into their residences.

Residents accuse many of the BMC officials of having taken bribes from the developer and allowing the illegal floors to come up. The flat owners have also been paying property tax all these years.

In 2005, after a 20-year battle with the developer, the BMC declared all floors above the fifth as illegal and ordered their demolition. The past eight years have seen a protracted legal battle, with the residents losing the case in different courts. The fate of 140 flat owners was sealed in May when even the apex cour refused to order any relief, except granting a five-month extension.

The residents say that many buildings in Mumbai have illegal floors because of the collusion between unscrupulous developers and corrupt officials. But the BMC does not order the demolition of those floors.

Political parties have also rushed to the help of the residents and have been pressurising the government to come out with an ordinance. The Maharashtra government had in the past bypassed court orders by issuing an ordinance to regularise hundreds of illegal buildings in Ulhasnagar, an extended suburb of Mumbai.

On Sunday, Milind Deora, a union minister and the Congress MP from south Mumbai, appealed to party president Sonia Gandhi, asking her to direct Chavan to find a legal solution to prevent the demolition. Deora points out that the Campa Cola case is a classic one of a nexus between builders and the civic body, in which hundreds of ordinary people have been cheated.