The Calcutta High Court on Thursday directed the registrar of assurances not to register any sale deed of a property without the sanctioned plan.A division bench of Chief Justice T S Sivagnanam and Hiranmay Bhattacharyya passed the order while taking note of the fact that the under-construction building that collapsed in the Garden Reach area had no sanction plan.
“It has been built on a waterbody that has been there for the last 40 years. The block land and land revenue officer allowed the land conversion,” the chief justice noted while taking on record the report filed by the Kolkata Municipal Corporation.
Regarding compensation of the families of the dead, the bench directed the state government to pay another Rs 3 lakh in addition to the Rs 2 lakh ex gratia the state government paid to each family. The division bench also directed the state to pay another Rs 1 lakh over and above the Rs 50,000 already paid to each of the injured.
The division bench also directed the petitioner to serve notice on the developer who is now in Presidency Correctional Home and also to local councillor Shams Iqbal in the Garden Reach case. The chief justice refused to believe that similar unauthorized constructions were coming up in the city without the knowledge of local councillor or MLA.
“What was the elected representative doing when the construction was going on? They are unfit for continuing in the post,” the CJ observed. KMC counsel Jaydeep Kar submitted that the civic body had suspended the accused officers on court’s direction.
The court, while taking note of the KMC move to invite complaints on unauthorized constructions from the residents, expressed its “anguish” over the lack of “official and political will” of the authorities to take the court orders on unauthorized constructions to its logical end.
“The enforcing agency can’t act without the official and political will. Nothing has happened at Bidhannagar. The Bidhannagar Police Commissionerate goes to the spot and comes back citing public protests. A similar thing happened in another part of the city yesterday,” the CJ said. “Executive engineers should be given a free hand. Please allow your officers to function. You stand by them,” he said.
The CJ seized the opportunity to point out that the KMC was not being able to even regulate hawkers in front of the KMC headquarters.
The court went with the state and increased the compensation on grounds that the West Bengal Victim Compensation Scheme amended in 2017 fixes the lower limit of compensation only and doesn’t cap the upper limit.