Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) has proposed an amendment so people living in unsafe buildings can be evacuated and the structures demolished, mayor Firhad Hakim said on Friday.
Hakim said he had spoken to the municipal affairs department to propose an amendment to the KMC Act to bring about the change.
“We are trying to table an amendment to the KMC Act so that the civic body can pull down a dangerous building. We will take the help of police and evacuate the residents of the building. They will be assured that they will be rehabilitated when a new building comes up on the plot,” Hakim said at the monthly meeting of councillors at Town Hall.
“Dangerous buildings are a real cause of worry. We put up boards declaring a building ‘dangerous’, but people keep living there. Everyone knows it is a dangerous building, yet no one leaves. Often portions of a building collapse, leading to injuries and loss of lives.”
Every year, scores of buildings cave in during the monsoon and portions of others hang perilously through the year. Many people died following the collapse of unsafe buildings.
A woman and her three-year-old granddaughter, who were sleeping on the ground floor of a two-storey building in north Kolkata’s Ahiritola, died when a part of the rain-soaked, dilapidated structure collapsed in September.
A teenage girl and a young accountant died in 2017 when a portion of a 150-year-old building on Indian Mirror Street in central Kolkata collapsed.
Several KMC officials, who spoke off the record, said the KMC Act does have a provision to demolish dangerous buildings but that is hardly invoked.
The real problem, the officials said, is “lack of political will” to execute the provision.
Section 412 of the act empowers the municipal commissioner to get a dangerous building vacated.
The section states: “The municipal commissioner may, by order in writing, direct that any building, which in his opinion is in a dangerous condition… be vacated forthwith or within such period as may be specified in the order.”
It adds: “If any person fails to vacate the building in pursuance of such order, the municipal commissioner may direct any police officer to remove such person from the building and the police officer shall comply with such direction.”
According to a rough estimate of the KMC, there are about 3,000 dangerous buildings in the city, mostly in north and central Kolkata.
A batch of litigation prevents owners from pulling down buildings and erecting new ones. In many cases, the real owner is difficult to locate.
The tenants pay a meagre amount as rent and the owner has little or no incentive to spend money on the crumbling buildings.
Since 2017, KMC has been allowing additional construction areas if old and crumbling buildings with multiple tenants are pulled down and replaced with new structures.
The owner is allowed to sell the additional floor space to recover the expenses of construction, but in return has to rehabilitate all tenants in the new building.
However, few owners have shown interest in the scheme so far because of the legal tangles involved.