The Campa Cola Reprieve Raises Uncomfortable Questions
18 November, 2013: Relief for the 107 fla owners of Mumbai’s Campa Cola compound, condemned to the hammer, came from where it was least expected. The Supreme Court Bench, which had steadfastly refused to condone the illegal floors added by the builder in the Campa Cola buildings, stepped in on 13 November at the last minute. Just as the demolition squads were moving in, the court stayed the demolition till 31 May 2014 on ‘humanitarian grounds’. Granted a new lease of life, it was party time for the flat owners. However, the reprieve has divided public opinion and raised serious questions of law and discrimination.
There has never been any doubt about the illegality of the construction. The developer had been permitted to construct five-storey buildings. He went on to build two additional floors. In the case of two buildings, he went up to the 20th and 17th floors. The violation was brazen. Significantly, it wasn’t as if the flat buyers were innocents duped by a wily builder. When the home buyers moved in 1987, they were aware that the builder had deviated from the sanctioned plan; and for that reason, the buildings did not get Occupation Certificates (OC). They had been promised that the illegal floors would be ‘regularised’; and as all good citizens, they put their trust in the builder and believed that is how the system works.
In the city of Mumbai, there are 54,000 illegal buildings without OCs. Nobody is pulling them down; nobody is asking questions. Unfortunately, for the Campa Cola residents, they extended their hand, and went to court to seek regularisation. If they had just kept quiet, perhaps life would have been simpler.
While the strict stand of the Supreme Court decreeing the demolition of the illegally constructed floors in commendable, it is unfortunate the municipal officials who orchestrated all this have gone scot free. It is widely known that the Buildings Proposal Department of the Mumbai Municipal Corporation is the most corrupt among government agencies. Heavy bribes are a matter of routine. The illegal buildings were not erected in a day. The municipal engineers had ample time to assess the violations and stop construction work months before the developer could begin marketing his stock to gullible customers. They never did.
Gurbir SinghCampa Cola is not a new story. Across the road at the Campa Cola Worli junction, is a huge 65-story tower ‘Palais Royale’ being developed by the promoters of Sriram Mills. A PIL filed in the Bombay High Court has proved that the developers have added floors far in excess of the sanctioned plan by showing large dollops of refuge space. Refuge floors are a security requirement in all high-rise towers and are not calculated when computing how much floor-space the builder can construct. However, the refuge area, where residents assemble in the case of a fire, cannot exceed 4 per cent of the total sanctioned built-up area. In the case of ‘Palais Royale’, the developer had added on as much as 70 per cent as refuge floors; and had planned to enclose them as part of the residential flats. After an inquiry, the Municipal Commissioner has stopped the work; but not before Rs 300 crore worth of flats have already been sold!
Far more serious is the attempt by politicians and corrupt bureaucrats to ‘regularise’ illegal construction. It brings votes and money to this political class; but for cities groaning under excessive construction, these ‘regularisation’ schemes have become an environmental nightmare. Most states have created laws enabling governments to convert the ‘illegal’ into ‘legal’ by paying what is called a ‘compounding’ fee.
For instance, the Gujarat Regularisation of Unauthorised Development Act, 2011 was enacted to regularise around 20 lakh unauthorised constructions across the state, of which five lakh are estimated to be in Ahmedabad alone. Under this provision, the Ahmedabad municipality has received over a lakh of applications, and has regularised over 20,000 cases.
In Karnataka, a new state law has been brought into force called the Karnataka Town and Country Planning and Certain Other Laws (Amendment) Act, 2009. Popularly known as Akrama Sakrama scheme, the law seeks to regularise constructions that have violated rules pertaining to the setback area and floor-area ratio for buildings constructed before 3 December 2009. The state cabinet has now approved an ordinance to further extend the cut-off date. Tamil Nadu too has not lagged behind and, in June, the state government issued guidelines under Section 113-C of Tamil Nadu Town and Country Planning Act, 1971 for condoning violations and unauthorised construction.
Maharashtra does not have such a condoning-of-illegal-acts law; but with the Campa Cola case, the state government may now fall in line.
As a precedent, the reprieve for the flat owners of Campa Cola has serious implications. While the ‘human’ hand of the Supreme Court for a middle class housing society must be commended, will slum dwellers, who are far worse off in income and living standards, be similarly spared from the bulldozer?
In 2000-01, the Maharashtra government, in pursuit of a Bombay High Court order, had demolished over 50,000 shanties on the Sanjay Gandhi National Park. Several lives were lost too; but no court came to the rescue of these squatters. The eviction of thousands of jhuggis in the Trans-Yamuna and Ridge area of Delhi has also gone unwept and unsung.
Or, is it because of the media glare that the taps of sympathy were turned on? Law must not only be equal, but be seen to be equal. Otherwise, the charge of class discrimination against the judiciary is bound to stick.
Courtesy: Business World
