The Kolkata civic body’s “demolition” of an illegal building is often a shoddy job that allows owners to repair or ignore it and live on.
The Kolkata Municipal Corporaton (KMC) drills holes, cuts square or rectangular portions of floors and sometimes demolishes portions of walls. All these leave enough room for rebuilding, said engineers and officials familiar with such demolition jobs.
A section of KMC engineers said modern equipment and more funds should be made available so larger portions of an illegal building can be pulled down to an extent that it becomes impossible to rebuild the demolished portions without affecting the legally built parts.
The Telegraph visited a six-storeyed structure in Bowbazar, on a lane to the south of Medical College Kolkata, on Saturday. The builder had rebuilt demolished portions within two months of the first demolition. The civic body has again started to demolish the illegal portions of the building.
An official of the KMC said the owner had obtained a permit from the civic body to erect a four-storeyed structure but added two floors illegally.
“We demolished the casting of the top two illegal floors. We had cut open large portions of the floor in January,” said the official.
During a visit to the building a few weeks ago, some engineers of the KMC found that the demolished portions had been rebuilt.
Justice Amrita Sinha of Calcutta High Court on Friday ordered the demolition of a six-storeyed building in north Kolkata’s Narkeldanga. In January, a KMC team had arrived and damaged the two top floors of the building. Holes were made on the floors and some of the walls were pulled down.
Several shop owners sharing the Narkeldanga building’s address but located on the other side said nothing changed after the demolition drive. Workers continued
to plaster the walls and do other construction work, they said.
“It is now clear that larger portions of an illegal building, if possible the entire illegal portion, need to be demolished. The extent of demolition must be such that the builder will not be able to make any profit after rebuilding the demolished portion,” said a KMC official.
“At present, we demolish the illegal portions mostly manually using hammers. Among the machines used is a pneumatic drill machine. Either we need much more time so the entire illegal portion can be pulled down gradually or we need equipment that allow faster demolition,” the official added.
Multiple engineers of the KMC said it would be best to identify an illegal portion around the time construction began. It should then be demolished immediately. Demolition at a later stage has many challenges.
Often, like in the case of the Bowbazar building, some of the upper floors are illegal while the ones below were built after obtaining a permit from the KMC. Demolition of illegal portions then carries the risk of damaging parts built with valid permits.
Modern buildings are integrated structures where the columns of an entire structure are interlinked.
“If we hammer the column on upper floors, it may lead to damage to columns on
the lower floors, which have official approval from the KMC. During demolition, we have to be careful that the approved portion of a building is not damaged,” said an
official.
An official said that it is easier to demolish a structure if the entire building is illegal. It becomes even more difficult if the demolition is planned after people have started living in the illegal building. There are protests and the civic body passes the blame to police and beats a retreat.