Old & crumbling

Political leaders and administrators in the city are flirting with the lives of more than 1 lakh people residing in old and dilapidated buildings constructed before 1969. 

Even as the buildings cave in every monsoon leading to large-scale loss of life and property, the city’s decision makers are yet to scrap the Tenancy and Rent Control Act, which imposes restrictions on landlords to increase rents. 

The tenants pay rents on the old scale. With not much income from the building, the landlords put little money in their upkeep.

These buildings are dying a slow death. Framed during the time of World War II, primarily to deal with temporary shortage of accommodation for the military and government officials, the Act restricts the rents to go up as per the market rate.

National Commission on Urbanisation (NCU) in its report states that it is incredible that the Act, which has created a shortage of real estate and is ruining these properties, should still be in place six decades later.

Though the state government has announced amendment in the Act in its comprehensive housing policy, tabled in the Assembly in the recently-concluded Monsoon session, the amendments are yet to be  discussed and passed by the Assembly for the Act to become a bill.

In fact, anticipating political and local resistance in scrapping the Act all at once, the NCU has recommended that the government should implement it in phasewise manner, decontrolling commercial tenements first, followed by luxurious residential flats (those over 200 square meter) and then the remaining ones.

It comments that a major problem with the city’s management was the government’s inability to anticipate crisis and act in time to prevent it.