The violations range from construction without sanctioned plans to construction on open lands marked in layout/location plan as belonging to the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) or the Delhi government
The Capital will have to pay a huge price for "unhealthy and unhygienic" living, as 90 per cent of the buildings here are illegal, the Delhi High Court was informed on Wednesday.
The information was given to a bench of Acting Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice C Harishankar by a three-member expert panel set up by the High Court to look into illegal constructions.
The panel said that the "magnitude of the illegal construction is huge." It blamed the government and the civic bodies responsible for the "current mess" and added that, "the city will pay a huge price in unhealthy and unhygienic living for generations to come."
However, relief may be round the corner. In an over 200-page report, the panel has said that out of an estimated 4-4.5 million structures in Delhi, "it can safely be said that at least 90 per cent carry one kind of violation of the extant building bye-laws or another."
"The violations range from construction without sanctioned plans to construction on open lands marked in layout/location plan as belonging to the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) or the Delhi government," the panel has said.
Earlier on May 16, the court had appointed former CBI director D R Karthikeyan, ex-India Habitat Centre (IHC) Director R M S Liberhan and retired district judge Ravinder Kaur as members of the committee.
It had further instructed the committee to inspect the properties of all the three municipal bodies here and file a report in six weeks.
The decision to form a committee was taken after it was bombarded with several Public Interest Litigations (PILs) which alleged the existence of illegal constructions in all corners of the national capital.
The pleas also sought a criminal case be registered against the officials of the corporation, who had allegedly allowed such constructions to take place.
A report was then submitted in the court stating that the problem was compounded further by the age of various colonies, ranging from over 100 years to the recent times.
It added that the problem was not confined just to unauthorised colonies but was 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".
The committee members went around the city and noticed 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.
Surprisingly, some of these have also been 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.
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