The Times of India            28.09.2010

Almost half of city living in illegal homes

AHMEDABAD: Armed with a high court order, Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) is back on CG Road after almost two decades threatening to demolish illegal shops, encroachments in basements and pulling down buildings.

However, few ask the question why this posh road earned this dubious distinction of an unauthorised high street.

One may be surprised to know that the whole road is a conglomeration of 'nursing homes', on papers. Long back, Navrangpura was marked as a residential area, the only way one could get extra parking space was by showing the building 'nursing home' on record.

"The builders and local corporators colluded to allow these illegal buildings to mushroom. Later all shops were sold to individual owners - putting them in a fix. But when an objection was raised over 52 complexes in the mid 1990s on CG Road being illegal, the AMC took hefty impact fee from each of the owners of the commercial units as a refundable deposit. For 20 odd years now the unauthorised status of CG Road has been an arm twisting tool in the hands of the local corporators," says a senior AMC official.

What's more, it is not CG Road alone that is suffering. Nearly 6.2 lakh properties out of the 14.3 lakh registered in the city are illegal as per the AMC. The civic body recently slapped 19,000 demolition orders on shops and residences across the city.

The Justice BC Patel judgment stands testimony to the fact that corporators facilitated illegal constructions. In fact, nearly 1,200 high rises in the city do not have building use (BU) permission and according to the HC order these buildings should not have access to basic civic services.

"In the first phase nearly 50,000 people will have go without civic amenities after our ward officials disconnect drainage and water supply to their buildings. It's an embarrassing situation for the AMC and the end users. The present users are bearing the brunt of the mistakes committed by earlier AMC officials. Nearly 1.5 lakh square meters of space has been freed of encroachments over the last one year following the HC order," says another senior AMC official.