Land returned to farmers were either sold to builders or used for unauthorised construction
The menace of rampant unauthorised construction by unscrupulous builders was once again exposed on Tuesday night when two buildings collapsed in the Shahberi area of Greater Noida. The area alone has around 150 hectares of land which are used for building unauthorised structures. The lower middle class is lured by the relatively low-cost houses.
In 2009-10, the Greater Noida Authority had acquired 3,635 hectares of land from about a dozen villages to form the Noida Extension area. Around 161.531 hectares of this land came from Shahberi village. Later, following a Supreme Court order of October 2011, the land was returned to the farmers.
According to a senior authority official, they had no role to play after the land was returned to the farmers. Following this, the farmers either sold the land to builders or built illegal structures of their own without following building codes or obtaining mandatory approvals.
"The land is not notified by any authority, so the owners of the land have all the right to sell and purchase land according to their will and construct whatever they want. However, they required several documents which have to be passed by the authority but the people do not occupy them and continue to construct on their own," said a senior authority official.
Several illegal buildings like these are located across the entire Shahberi village. While disaster awaits if preventive steps are not taken right now. Locals claim that they were sold land at a very cheap price and owners of the plot or building showed us all the documents required to acquire the land.
"I purchased a plot thinking as a future investment as the land is closed to Crossings Republik as well as to Gaur City. The price of the land would go up to in the coming years. But following the incident, I doubt I have to talk to the person from whom I purchased the land," said Vikram Rathi, a local.
A committee has been set up by the DM and in his order, said the investigation will also focus on whether the Greater Noida Authority had taken any concrete step to stop illegal construction in the area and if it had done so, what were the results. While have asked the ADM to submit the reports with 15 days.
DM'S POINTERS TO ADM FOR PROBE
- What were reasons behind the mishap?
- Did the two buildings come under the jurisdiction of the Greater Noida Authority?
- If so, were there any safety precautions or not?
- Weather the quality of the material used in the construction of the building good?
- Weather the labour force followed rules of construction or not?
- Do the above incidents which led to the casualties come under the criminal negligence category or not?
- Was there any attempts made by the authorities to stop any illegal construction in the area? If yes, what was the result?
- Who are the responsible people?
- What are the suggestions to prevent the occurence of such incidents?
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 "Greater Noida buildings collapse")
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