Santa Cruz fire fallout: BMC slaps notice on 150 illegal warehouses ………Sharad Vyas
Mumbai: A day after three young men died in a fire that gutted a garment warehouse in the congested area of Khotwadi in Santa Cruz West,the BMC on Friday served notices to about 150 owners in the vicinity for carrying out the trade illegally.
The notices served by the civic building and factory and licence departments under sections 390 and 394 of the BMC Act give traders eight days time to respond or face prosecution in court.The violations invite a minimum fine of Rs 1,000 and maximum of Rs 10,000.
Senior officials,though,pointed out that the rot runs deep.Similar drives in the past have fizzled out as it easy for traders to just approach the Vile Parle municipal court and plead guilty to get away with a meagre fine.
In 2007,about 120 owners were booked for trade violations,but most got away with paltry fines ranging from Rs 1,000 to Rs 2,000.
It becomes difficult to demolish the structures on grounds of commercial violation since they have been paying assessment taxes regularly since 1959 when the area was declared a town planning (TP) scheme and are authorised as they were built before the 1995 datum line,officials said.
Over the years,an army of unscrupulous lower level officials,slumlords and politicians has been working tirelessly to add floors to the original structures and then renting them out to traders.
As a result,Khotwadi,with some 3,000 structures,has turned into a fire trap with no mandatory access path of six feet in the bylanes and structures illegally touching a height of 20 feet over and above the stipulated 14.
Khotwadi,with a strong population of 1,500 Patel traders from Gujarat,has been in the eye of the storm since a supreme court order in 1984 declaring all structures illegal according to the TP scheme plans.
Eight years ago,the state declared that TP be transferred to the slum board to be developed as a SRA project.A total of 42 buildings were to come up as part of the SRA,but only three have since been completed.In 2007,the developers stalled work citing financial reasons.
The history of the land goes back to 1920 when it was owned by the N J Wadia Trust.Later,after handing out compensation to trustees,the land got transferred to a private builder.
Numerous tenancy disputes followed and the BMC later took over the TP scheme for implementation according to the SC directive in 1984.
The structures were later regularised and TP scheme turned into SRA project.All these factors mean it becomes difficult for us to challenge the structures legality, said local corporator Mohan Lokegaonkar.
In the absence of adequate access to the ground-plus-two warehouse,fire officials had a tough time carrying out rescue-andrelief operations in the congested area.
* GUTTED: The illegal garment warehouse in Khotwadi,Santa Cruz,which caught fire