Thursday, November 20, 2014

HC appointed monitoring committee meets after nearly two years

Members suggest new enforcement mechanism to curb illegal buildings

C Shivakumar
Chennai:

Could a new enforcement agency under Chennai Corporation to tackle the
menace of illegal buildings be formed? And whether police could be a
part of the enforcement agency in stopping the violations.

These were the discussions that revolved after the High Court
appointed Monitoring committee convened after a gap of nearly two
years with both official and non-official members.

A monitoring committee member and former bureaucrat M G Deivasahayam
said that the focus was on streamlining the enforcement agency besides
creating proper enforcement mechanism. The discussions revolved around
creating new enforcement agency constituted by town planners,
engineers as well as police.

The meeting also stressed the need that planning permissions should
adhere to masterplan besides development control regulations should
not be relaxed for anyone.

“The members also discussed that once planning process is streamlined,
there should be a mechanism to find out on how the construction is
taking place,” Deivasahayam said.

The monitoring committee also expressed concern over T nagar
violations and the decision to initiate action has been dragged for
six to seven months.

Deivasahayam said that Moulivakkam is a pure failure of enforcement.
The builder has removed the columns and beam. “Had the enforcement
wing of CMDA inspected it, then the incident could have been stopped,”
he said.

The meeting was held after Madras High Court has directed the
committee appointed by it on August 2006 to meet every 15 days.

Interestingly, the High court has also directed the monitoring
committee to submit a report by December 23, 2014 on what steps had
been taken to stem the problem of unauthorized construction and what
measures have been taken now after passing the order.

Although differences over the cut-off date to legalise erring
buildings from July 27, 1999 to July 1, 2007 still persists but the
meeting went off smoothly. “We have left it to the High court to
clarify on that matter,” he said.

Factfile:

--- The monitoring committee has 12 members, six official and six non-official.

--- The last meeting of monitoring committee, which had the presence
of non official members, was held on January 4, 2013.

--- The June 2013 meeting was boycotted by High court appointed
non-official members.

--- All official members, except chairman of Tamil Nadu Electricity
Board, were present  in the current meeting

---- Three non-official members of High Court appointed monitoring
committee were present. PT Krishnan of Intach and L M Menezes have
resigned while architect and urban planner A Srivatsan has migrated to
Ahmedabad.

--Monitoring committee to meet before December 23 again after which
the report would be wound up and submitted to High Court.

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