New Delhi:
Following the Delhi building collapse in which 69 people have died, the focus has now shifted to illegal buildings that are made flouting every rule.
The people are angry over the issue. Over the years, the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) and other officials allowed these buildings to come up. Now the same officials are conducting surveys and declaring the buildings unsafe and literally throwing the people out on the streets.
In Laxmi Nagar, the MCD has conducted a quick survey and found 38 buildings illegal and unsafe to live in - officials had not spotted these buildings for years in their routine surveys. Definitely not the building that collapsed!
Sources have told NDTV that a lot of buildings here are illegal.
Cheap and shoddy structures, activists allege, are routinely constructed by builders and local politicians who bribe MCD officials to get clearances in this riverside land where no constructions are permitted to begin with.
Then they illegally add basements and extra floors weakening the buildings and sell them too.
"Politicians teamed up with MCD officers to build these houses. I have written 100 times to the MCD chief," said Romesh Sabharwal, Director, Central Bank, activist.
"How could the government not know? The government and its officers know everything, they created this mess," said an angry resident of the area.
Most of the people were driven out of their villages by poverty and have struggled for years to own a home in the capital. In doing that they have been forced to bribe government officials at every step for home registration, ration cards and voter ID.
Now in an unparalleled irony, those same offices have booted them out of their homes.
The people are angry over the issue. Over the years, the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) and other officials allowed these buildings to come up. Now the same officials are conducting surveys and declaring the buildings unsafe and literally throwing the people out on the streets.
In Laxmi Nagar, the MCD has conducted a quick survey and found 38 buildings illegal and unsafe to live in - officials had not spotted these buildings for years in their routine surveys. Definitely not the building that collapsed!
Sources have told NDTV that a lot of buildings here are illegal.
Cheap and shoddy structures, activists allege, are routinely constructed by builders and local politicians who bribe MCD officials to get clearances in this riverside land where no constructions are permitted to begin with.
Then they illegally add basements and extra floors weakening the buildings and sell them too.
"Politicians teamed up with MCD officers to build these houses. I have written 100 times to the MCD chief," said Romesh Sabharwal, Director, Central Bank, activist.
"How could the government not know? The government and its officers know everything, they created this mess," said an angry resident of the area.
Most of the people were driven out of their villages by poverty and have struggled for years to own a home in the capital. In doing that they have been forced to bribe government officials at every step for home registration, ration cards and voter ID.
Now in an unparalleled irony, those same offices have booted them out of their homes.
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