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THANE REALTY
Plan for special court to check illegal bldgs ………..Prafulla Marpakwar I TNN
Alarmed by the massive growth in the number of illegal constructions in the entire Thane-Ulhasnagar-Kalyan belt, the Congress-led Democratic Front government is planning to set up a special court as well as a special police station to tackle the menace.
Thane municipal commissioner Nandkumar Jantre on Monday confirmed that he has taken up the issue of setting up a special court and a special police station with the state government. 的t will not be possible to halt the illegal and unauthorised constructions in Thane and surrounding areas with the existing set-up and inadequate strength of law enforcing agencies. In my opinion, we will be able to tackle the problem only if we set up a special court and special police station,鋳 Jantre told TOI.
According to official records, while the number of unauthorised constructions in the Thane-Ulhasnagar-Kalyan belt have crossed the two lakh mark, civic organisations have lodged 500 first information reports with different police stations for violation of the Maharashtra Regional Town Planning Act. If the state government accepts Jantre痴 suggestion, Maharashtra will be the first state across the country to set up a special court to halt illegal and unauthorised constructions.
A senior urban development official on Monday confirmed that due to acute shortage of manpower, the law enforcing agencies were unable to take cognisance of complaints against illegal constructions across the state. 擢or a robbery of Rs 2,000, a senior official of the rank of deputy commissioner of police personally visits the spot for investigation, but the same officer is not concerned about a seven-storey illegal building worth Rs 100 crore,鋳 the official said.
So far as illegal constructions in the Thane belt were concerned, the official said several senior IAS officials were appointed to conduct probes but no action had been taken for obvious political reasons. 鉄enior bureaucrat Nand Lal had submitted a comprehensive report on the illegal constructions in Ulhasnagar. He had specifically named erring officials and politicians, but no action has been taken so far,鋳 the official said.
On the role of the police, the official said they are least interested in probing such cases. 溺ore than 500 cases have been filed for violation of the MRTP Act, but so far, not a single case has been investigated,鋳 he said.
Under such circumstances, the only option was to set up special court and police station, which will exclusively deal with unauthorised constructions. 展e have special police stations for cases of power theft. Our information is that after such police stations were set up, the number of cases have reduced drastically. We expect similar results if special police stations are set up to tackle illegal constructions,鋳 he said.
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