News: SC seeks explanation from civic bodies for not taking action against illegal constructions in Delhi-21.01.2018

SC seeks explanation from civic bodies for not taking action against illegal constructions in Delhi

NEW DELHI: Slamming Delhi’s civic authorities for their failure to take action against unauthorised constructions, the Supreme Court on Monday said they failed to discharge their duties leading to complete breakdown of law and sought an explanation from them on why they allowed illegal construction over the years.

A bench of Justices Madan B Lokur and Deepak Gupta directed MCD, NDMC, DDA, Land and Development Office (L&DO) to file their response after senior advocate Ranjit Kumar, assisting the court as amicus curiae, contended that the authorities had taken no action to stop illegal construction after 2012 when the apex court had stayed sealing drive conducted by its monitoring committee.

The court passed the order after reading the report filed by the monitoring committee highlighting that officials of civic authorities were hand in glove with the builders to allow them to build an illegal structure in violation of laws for extraneous considerations and no action was being taken by them.

The committee, comprised of former advisor of Election Commission K J Rao, Environment Pollution Control Authority (EPCA) chairman Bhure Lar and Major General Som Jhingan, was entrusted the task to carry out sealing drive of illegal construction in 2006 and sealed thousands of premises. The sealing drive went on till January 2012 when the court asked the panel not to proceed further as the government has brought in force 2021 Master Plan for regularising some of the illegal construction. But the committee was asked to keep filing reports on the status of unauthorised construction in the city.

In its latest report, the committee had said that after fear factor among people for not building illegal construction has ‘evaporated’ after SC order on moratorium on sealing and civic bodies have failed to enforce law leading to widespread unauthorised construction all over Delhi.

“The committee during its period of existence was successful in creating a climate of acceptance of the laid down regulation in terms of Master Plan, building bye laws and other enactments with respect to land use, construction activities and general functioning. With the embargo imposed on sealing, the fear factor has completely evaporated and all the agencies namely MCD, NDMC, DDA, L&DO are back to their dubious practices and are hand in glove with the greedy citizens. They are having a free run and as a result, unauthorised construction is going on unabated in all parts of Delhi. Although the MCD Act and other regulations clearly define the responsibilities of the agencies, no action is taken against the corrupt official,” the report said.

The bench said that the court, while staying sealing drive, had not restrained the civic authorities to take action against builders for illegal construction and they failed to carry out their statutory duty.