The B Ward, where the building collapsed on Tuesday, registered 928 complaints and the civic body demolished only 87 of them.
After receiving over 52 thousand complaints of illegal constructions in the last three years the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has demolished only 5,461 ie. little over 10% of the complaints so far.
The B Ward, where the building collapsed on Tuesday, registered 928 complaints and the civic body demolished only 87 of them. It is the official record of the BMC and activists fear there are many more such constructions across the city.
To keep in check unauthorised construction, the BMC had started an online complaint system since March 2016. As per an RTI reply filed by activist Shakeel Sheikh, BMC has received 94,851 complaints on its Removal of Encroachment Tracking Management System (RETMS) from March 1, 2016, till July 8, 2019. Out of which only 5,461 structures were demolished by the BMC. The city has witnessed many fatal accidents in illegal construction in the last few years. Husseini Building (Bhendi Bazar), Sai Siddhi Building (Ghatkopar), Kamla Mill Compound, Bhanu Farsan Mart and Hotel City Kinara incident happened due to illegal construction and resulted in more than 100 deaths.
"As per the data, the civic body has received 94,851 complaints out of which it treated 42,697 complaints as duplicate or double. BMC has done an inspection of 40,962 buildings and notices were issued to only 21,873 cases. The end result, the demolition happened only in 5461 buildings which are under 11% of actual complaints," said Shakil Shaikh.
He added, "BMC is spending around Rs 20 crores on Building and Factory Department and Police protection. The civic body serves notices to more than 15,000 illegal constructions but hardly takes action on 10 to 20% of them. In some cases the action is bogus. It clearly shows connivance of municipal officials with builders of these structures. When will the BMC start real action? "
According to the data, a maximum number of complaints were received in L ward (9,192), followed by Malad, Borivali, Dahisar, Jogeshwari, Andheri. 928 cases were registered in the B ward comprising Dongri, Mashid, Bhendi Bajar and BMC demolished only 87 unauthorised constructions in the last three years.
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