Councillors have no role in the demolition of an illegal building and they should leave the matter to engineers and officials of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC), mayor Firhad Hakim said on Friday.
Hakim was responding to questions — during the weekly phone-in programme, Talk to Mayor, on Friday — about whether the civic body would move ahead with the demolition of an illegal building in Baghajatin that was halted midway in June following protests by residents.
The local councillor had reached the demolition site during the protests.
Questioned on allegations about councillors’ interference in demolition of illegal structures, Hakim told reporters after the programme: “If there is an executive order that a building was erected illegally and has to be pulled down, no councillor’s intervention can stop it. The KMC will move ahead with the demolition.”
Councillors, he said, have to realise that they have no role in the demolition of an illegal structure. “It is not their job to find out if a building is legal or illegal. That is the job of the administration,” Hakim said.
He then asked the chief engineer of the KMC’s building department about the progress of the demolition of the building in Baghajatin. The chief engineer said demolition would be undertaken again “very soon”.
“We have prepared a list of buildings to be demolished and this building is on the list. The last time we had demolished a portion of it, but there were protests. We will demolish more portions this time.”
The under-construction three-storeyed building in a colony in Baghajatin was found to have come up without any permission from the civic body. “None of the three floors had any permission from the KMC,” an official had said.
A police team that was accompanying the civic body’s demolition squad was outnumbered by the protesters and had to beat a retreat, KMC officials had then said.
Hakim suggested in the phone-in programme that the KMC’s building department set up a dedicated demolition cell where engineers focused solely on demolition of illegal buildings.
KMC sources said once a complaint is lodged about an allegedly illegal structure, the civic body serves a notice on the owner, asking him to appear in a hearing.
The complainant and the owner are heard and documents are checked. Civic engineers inspect the building to check the veracity of the complaint. “A decision on demolition is taken only after hearing both sides,” an official said.
The KMC does not pull down an entire structure. It cuts open a large portion of the floor so that the building is no longer fit for living and is beyond repairs.
The KMC has made about 300 illegal buildings unfit for living in the past year.
Civic officials admitted that there are still an innumerable number of illegal structures in the city.