GHMC flouts rules for residential buildings

Hyderabad: Senior GHMC officials are allegedly ignoring violation of building rules even though they are well aware of them. 

As per rules, the civic body can accord permission for residential or commercial buildings but not for semi-residential or semi-commercial buildings. If this rule is violated, the Corporation has the authority to either demolish the structure, or seize it and impose heavy fines.

Nothing of that sort has been done so far, which is not only affecting revenue but also poses a grave threat to life as these buildings do not have any fire safety measures. 

In clear violation of rules, assistant medical officers of health (AMoH) have been issuing trade licences to shop owners who are running their businesses in residential buildings.

According to highly placed sources, the Corporation cannot allow a business to run in a part of a residential building. In such cases the civic body has to collect an impact fee, but this too is only applicable in the erstwhile MCH areas and not in the 12 peripheral municipalities which were merged to form the GHMC.

Even the Comptroller and Auditor General of India in its report tabled on March 28 this year had found fault with building permit fee not being levied. The report said that permission was given to 42,425 buildings during 2012-17. An audit was conducted of 894 of those buildings, and it was found that charges were not collected in cases where residential property was used as godowns, warehouses, factory and workplace.

The penalty would have totalled Rs 5.62 crore). Surprisingly, the corporation to date has neither collected the impact fee in the MCH area nor sealed the buildings nor cancelled the trade licences of offenders in peripheral areas.

Sources said that there are more than one lakh buildings in the peripheral circles of Kukatpally, Serilingampally, Quthbullapur, LB Nagar, Maheshwaram, Malkajgiri, Kapra, Alwal, Rajendranagar, Ramachandrapuram and Patancheru. Owners of several buildings have been allowing restaurants to operate on the ground floor, which poses a threat to residents on the upper floors.

A senior GHMC officer admitted that violation of building rules occurs and said that though AMoHs were warned not to issue trade licences in residential buildings, they have been blatantly issuing them. 

He said that several AMoHs have been issuing permission to restaurants in the name of banks and ATMs. "How many banks will a circle have? Despite warnings they have been issuing the permissions. Even though the issue has been brought to the notice of the higher authorities, this is seen as a source of income for the corporation but not as a matter of the safety of residents," the officer said. 

He said that if such buildings were brought under commercial tax net as they should be, the corporation would add at least Rs 50 crore to its annual revenue.

The fact that the corporation would earn more revenue if it observed its own rules shows that individual officers are benefitting by pocketing bribes to allow the illegalities to continue.