The demolition of an “unauthorised” building in Garden Reach that was stopped on Thursday following resistance from a handful of people in the locality remained stalled on Friday with no signs of resumption over the weekend.
Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) officials said the work was stalled because of an appeal moved in the high court by the building’s developer.
High court sources, however, told this newspaper there is no such appeal.
Sources in the civic body said it is a “convention” to keep work on hold if an appeal is pending in court. “We got to know from our legal team that an appeal against the demolition will be heard on Monday. Our legal team advised us to keep the demolition on hold till the appeal is heard,” said a senior KMC official.
The KMC’s failure to carry out the demolition job even after the identification of an “unauthorised” building, citing local resistance or a pending appeal that apparently does not exist, shows how illegal construction goes unchecked.
A KMC team had started the demolition of the five-storey building at J-474/C/1 Paharpur Road on Thursday after declaring the structure “unauthorised and dangerous”.
The building had tilted dangerously towards an adjoining building apparently making the structure unstable.
As the demolition work started on Thursday, a few residents of the building and the neighbourhood started demonstrating, saying the move by the civic officials was “illegal”.
“How can they demolish the part which is perfectly all right? They should demolish only the illegal portion of the building,” one of the residents had said on Thursday.
Protests and agitations forced the KMC team to halt work several times. Finally, police intervened and set up barricades to cordon off the area where the KMC men were working.
The KMC team left the site on Thursday afternoon.
On Friday, a civic official said they were “told verbally” by a lawyer that an appeal against the demolition, filed by the bulding’s developer, is pending in the high court.
This newspaper made several attempts to verify the claims made by the KMC officials and found that there was no such appeal pending in Calcutta High Court.
A source in the court said: “There is no such appeal pending before any division bench of the court. So there is no question of passing any order regarding this matter.”
The alleged inaction by the KMC came a day after civic officials held the first round of meetings with Kolkata Police to discuss ways to counter the menace of illegal constructions in the city.
It was decided that the KMC would act as the first responder while the police would be the second responder once an illegal building is identified.
A senior police officer said the role of the police is “limited to assisting the KMC” if the civic body alerts them.
The collapse of a five-storey allegedly unauthorised building in Garden Reach on March 17, which left 12 people dead, prompted the civic body to resume the coordination meetings.