KJ George assures buildings with 100 per cent violations will be taken over

BENGALURU: With the IT city becoming increasingly unmanageable, Bengaluru Development Minister K. J. George had assured that structures with 100 per cent violations will be taken over by the BBMP or BDA. Experts said that to go ahead with such a decision, lot of political will, courage, sense of fair play and transparency was needed.

Mukunda, member of Citizen's Action Forum told Deccan Chronicle, “Most of the buildings in the city would have violated one or the other rule. If we measure the amount of violation on a scale of 100, majority of the buildings would have violated up to 30-40 per cent of the law.”

The problem with the government is that they come up with these measures, go ahead with it for some time and then forget it. We all know what happened with anti-encroachment drive on storm water drains in the city, Mukunda said.

He pointed out that building violations are carried out in nexus of citizens, builders and government officials, Mukunda said, “There is no clarity from the government on regularising of building violations. If a building has made over 50 per cent violation, what should be done to reduce the violation? Will some part of the building be demolished to reduce the percentage of violation?”

With Akrama Sakrama, government can make over Rs 5,000 crore penalty by regularising deviations from sanctioned plans. But government's aim should be to prevent such kind of violations and illegal constructions in future, Mukunda added.

Sridhar Pabbisetty, CEO, Namma Bengaluru Foundation said, “The tragedy of how 141 hapless citizens lost a roof over their head due to the SWD encroachment and how the government treated two influential people (actor Darshan and politician Shamanur Shivarankarappa) differently proves enough that the government has different standards for powerful and ordinary citizens.” The Government has to be transparent in the process of dealing with encroachments and building plan violations, he added.

When contacted BBMP Mayor Padmavathi said, “Violations cannot be done without the knowledge of engineers. At present we do not have any power to initiate action against engineers, who had supported violations. We are gearing up to amend Karnataka Municipal Corporation's (KMC) Act to empower us to book criminal cases against erring engineers, which will act a deterrent preventing violations.”

With the support of all political parties, we can regularise building violations, she added.