Monday, December 12, 2011

Dinesh Kamath's Editorial (Illegal buildings and common man) that was published in Newsband


Illegal buildings and common man
There are may illegal buildings on land owned by City and Industrial Development Corporation of Maharashtra (CIDCO), Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation (NMMC) and the Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC). These buildings are worth crores of rupees. Innocent buyers pay lakhs of rupees for these homes. Once they buy these houses there is all the possibilities of their losing these houses and in the process suffering heavy losses which are to the tune of lakhs of rupees.
The main reason why the buyers get fooled into purchasing these flats is their nominal cost and the fact that they are located in ideal places. But once they buy the flats they begin witnessing the clash between CIDCO, MIDC and NMMC on one side and the owners of these illegal buildings on the other side. They come to realize that these flats are located on the land belonging to CIDCO, NMMC or MIDC and that the builders they purchased the flats from had encroached upon these lands. They become aware of existence of local land mafia who had fooled them. They also realize that they were shown forged papers, forged commencement certificates and also fake occupation certificates. They also become aware of the fact that besides developers, the local politicians and civic officials are also involved in this racket. They feel shocked to hear that developers had constructed their buildings by misusing public land that was reserved for something else. They can't even approach local corporators to help them out of these situations since they come to realize that even these corporators are involved in this big racket.
Many buyers have purchased the flats in these buildings by taking housing loans. They find themselves in deep trouble when they are asked to vacate their new homes owing to the fact that the buildings they are residing in are illegal. When complaints relating to this matter are lodged, all that the civic officials do is issue notices to the developer and later it is found that the issue has been buried for a sum. It is clear that in the matter of such illegal constructions, there is a nexus between developers, civic bodies, politicians and even policemen.
It is the common man who gets trapped in this vicious circle of corruption. It is the common man who turns out to be the loser in such a situation although he has not committed any fault. All that he can do is file a case in the court but these court cases too last for years and years and at last it is found that the verdicts often go in favour of the culprits thus leaving the common man totally embarrassed and looted of a big sum of money which was his lifetime savings. The question is how long will the common man have to face such injustice?

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