Mayor Firhad Hakim told engineers of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation on Saturday that the civic body’s intentions will be doubted after a Kolkatan told the mayor that a complaint about an illegal building has been dragging for 10 years and the KMC has allegedly lost the file related to the case.
The caller to the weekly phone-in programme Talk to Mayor told Hakim that the complaint of illegal construction has been dragging since 2013. And he was recently told that the file was now missing.
The matter is pending before a tribunal that hears appeals against the demolition of illegal structures.
The mayor told the engineers that the matter was not being heard by the tribunal because the file has allegedly gone missing.
The caller also told mayor that the file was not being sent to the tribunal.
“How will you defend your actions? If we have ordered the demolition of a structure and now we have lost the file, our case will not stand in the tribunal,” Hakim said.
“This case has been dragging on since 2013. By now people have entered and started living in the building,” he said.
The mayor said that such incidents raise suspicion about the intention of officials and about the intention of the KMC. “This raises questions about the intention of the officers, about the intention of the KMC,” he said.
Hakim had last week asked officials to amend laws so that a structure can be pulled down within 15 days of being identified as illegal. The mayor said the existing system, where the owners of illegal buildings are given a chance to plead their case in a hearing, was very long.
In October, the mayor said that in the four years during which he has been taking calls from ordinary Kolkatans at the Talk to Mayor programme, complaints against illegal buildings remained a permanent feature.