Illegal Constructions

On Sunday, 28.08.2022, the twin towers in NOIDA were demolished within 12 seconds, by adopting advanced blast technique. It was a remarkable achievement as far as adopting advanced  technique is concerned. Now there are news of the orders having been issued for demolition of a resort which was built illegally at Dapoli, in the Konkan region of Maharashtra state, by an influential political leader. In many such cases, demolition of illegal buildings seems a thoughtless action.  

Logically such illegal constructions take place due to negligence of the corrupt officers of local municipal bodies. So those officers should be punished and the cost of demolition should be recovered from them. But instead of that, the expenses of demolition are ultimately pushed to the honest tax payers. That is wrong. To change that situation, some new provisions should be incorporated in the law.  Such illegal buildings should be confiscated, then legalized and after that, their ownership rights should be auctioned. That will generate the revenue for the local municipal body.

However the corrupt officers of local municipal body are less likely to take any action. If they were honest, such illegal construction would have been stopped at the early stage itself. But that does not happen. So an alternative needs to be explored. 

 

Privatization of Vigilance, Investigation and Prosecution (VIP) -- 

The provisions in the law should be such that, anybody who files a law suit in a court, against the illegal construction and wins the case, should be made new owner of that construction, free from any lien and such construction should be legalized. This will be a better option.  Generally the corruption occurs due to the monopoly of the authority. Once such monopoly is broken down, the scope for corruption diminishes, though may not become absolute zero. Yet that will lead to considerable improvement. 

There should be a policy of encouraging the unemployed educated youth, the lawyers and other businessmen to set up their proprietary or partnership firms or Pvt. Ltd. companies and undertake such VIP activities. This should become the sunrise business or industry sector. There will be considerable employment opportunities also. There is naturally an upper limit on the number of the prosecutors whom the corrupt businessmen can feed by offering the bribe.  This is logic behind my suggestion of privatization of vigilance, investigation and prosecution.


This should be in addition to the penal actions to be taken against the builder (i.e. the entrepreneur or the owner of illegal building), the construction contractor and the financiers of such illegal construction. The only effective way of punishing the corrupt officers of local municipal bodies is of terminating their service and confiscating their all PF and/or pension benefits. It should be a mandatory provision in the law, for the courts to issue such orders, even if the law suit is not against the municipal office bearers. The law for PF also should be amended to that effect.

It is quite possible that the entrepreneur might have sold the building or the apartments or the flats to a few or many legitimate buyers. They may suffer regarding the ownership rights. Some provisions can be made to guide and protect such legitimate buyers.

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Last updated on 2022.09.03. (First uploaded here on 2022.09.03.)
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