CMDA guilty of helping illegal buildings mushroom

Chennai: The silence of Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority and state housing ministry is deafening though five days have passed since four people including two children perished in a fire accident at an illegal building in Vadapalani. The CMDA and Chennai corporation have not any taken step to tighten their laws to prevent recurrence of accidents.

“The top brass of CMDA, vested with the job of identifying illegal buildings has been ducking and the city corporation is usually blamed for every building collapse or tragedy”, said a corporation official seeking anonymity. “CMDA babus enjoy power without responsibility, they mint money for building approvals, but whenever there is a tragedy the CMDA remains quiet passing the buck to corporation. The only job of CMDA in Chennai is to approve and regulate buildings and the department fails to take action. Even in Moulivakkam building collapse, CMDA was a mute spectator, but the local civic authorities cleared the debris and bodies, rued the official.

According to police sources the building owner is still absconding. A three-member team is on the job tracing the missing Vijayakumar and the neighbours of the ill-fated building had been cautioned to be careful, as the fire could have damaged their electric wires and cables, police said.

Housing minister Udumalai Radhakrishnan and housing secretary Dharmendra Pratap Yadav were unavailable for comments on growing illegal buildings in Chennai.  

“The nexus between CMDA and corporation engineers encourage builders to violate town planning rules and action taken against illegal buildings is less than two per cent in Central Chennai. There are so many building violations in Choolai”, said civic activist T. Solomon, who had filed public interest litigations with the Madras high court on illegal structures. “The lock and seal done by CMDA is a big joke. For instance there are three illegal buildings in ward 58 sealed by the CMDA and all these buildings have water and power connection and are rented out by the building owner”, he said adding “only if the judiciary passes stern orders there will be an end to illegal structures.”