New Delhi: The municipal corporations in the city on Wednesday told the Delhi High Court that unauthorised construction cannot be curbed or prevented by conducting inspections but "economic deterrents" should be put in place for this.
The submission was made before a bench of justices Badar Durrez Ahmed and Siddharth Mridul which was also informed that at present there are 1.5-2 lakh unauthorised constructions in the national capital, with the situation attaining "rampant" proportions in East Delhi.
The submissions were made by the respective Commissioners of the three Municipal Corporations of Delhi - East, South and North - who also said "we are serious about removing the menace of unauthorised constructions".
In view of the views of the MCD Commissioners, who were present in pursuance to the court's earlier order, the bench asked them to "have another meeting and come out with an action plan" as well as "specific suggestions" of what is required of other authorities concerned, including the Ministry of Urban Development and Delhi government, to curb unauthorised constructions.
The court also roped in Delhi Jal Board (DJB) and Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission (DERC) to help solve the issue and listed the bunch of petitions pertaining to unauthorised construction for further hearing on October 15.
"Meanwhile, in all these matters concerned respondents shall file status report with respect to the alleged unauthorised construction and action taken in accordance with law for removing them," the bench said.
It also told the authorities to stop "passing the buck" on whose responsibility it is to take action against the unauthorised constructions. During the hearing, the ineffectiveness of "inspector raj" was raised before the court by South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC) Commissioner Manish Gupta who said that the prevalent method of deploying engineers and police personnel, in whatever numbers, to check unauthorised construction "will not work".
Gupta said that the solution would be to put in place economic deterrents so that the persons carrying out unauthorised construction "feels the pinch" of indulging in such activity. The measures he suggested included not giving water and electricity connection to buildings which have not obtained completion certificate, as is the practice in Greater Noida.
He also suggested giving provisional water and power connections to structures without completion certificates at tariffs which are three times the actual rate. The East Delhi Commissioner said most of the areas under his jurisdiction have unauthorised constructions or are awaiting regularisation and thus, steps taken by them to curb the same is "not effective".
Apart from sealing and demolition of unauthorised buildings, the other measures suggested by the MCDs to curb such constructions included prosecution of individuals responsible for the same, snapping of water and power supply as well as asking police to keep a watch on such properties.
The municipal bodies submitted that despite having these measures, the problem of unauthorised construction is not solved due to lack of implementation. They said that despite writing to the discoms and DJB to cut the power and water supply to unauthorised constructions, these authorities did not take any action.
The directions and observations came from the court which took up together about 10 petitions pertaining to unauthorised construction in various parts of the national capital. The court had on several occasions earlier pulled up the MCDs for lack of action against those indulging in unauthorised construction and sought the presence of the Commissioners to explain "what is happening" as more and more such cases were being filed.
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