Dinesh Kamath's news item 'Residents of buildings on Palm Beach Road face tough time' that was published in Newsband

Residents of buildings on Palm Beach Road face tough time

By Dinesh Kamath

NAVI MUMBAI: There are many high-rises on Palm Beach Road which are suffering owing to their violating the coastal regulatory zone (CRZ) rules.

The flats in these buildings have cost them crores of rupees but they find themselves unable to get occupation certificates (OC), water connection from the Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation and power supply from MSEDCL (Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Co. Ltd). 

These buildings fall within 500 metres of the coastal line and the permission of environment and forest ministry has not been taken.

The residents of these blacklisted buildings are facing tough time. Due to no water connection they have to depend on water supplied by tanker to their buildings and also they are forced to buy packaged drinking water.

Another problem they face is that in spite of having paid the maintenance to the developer, all their lifts don’t function. Only a few function.

These residents are going through a mental trauma and owing to the fact that they have not received OC, they are unable to claim any insurance amount. The developers of these buildings are making all possible efforts to fetch OCs for the residents of the buildings but in vain. They refuse to admit that they are at fault since it was CIDCO which had sold them the plots for development and they went on to carry out the constructions as per their guidelines. It was only after they had completed the constructions and sold the buildings that they were asked to take the environment ministry’s permission since the plots fell under CRZ. These developers question as to how were they given commencement certificates whey they had not taken the permission?

It is left to be seen as to how Appasaheb Jarhad, the acting municipal commissioner of Navi Mumbai who has taken additional charge of NMMC, will tackle this situation. Since he is not from Navi Mumbai it will take him some time to get acquainted with this city and particularly the Palm Beach area.