‘MCD officials ignored illegal work’

With the Municipal Corporation of Delhi turning a blind eye towards unauthorised constructions in the city, the Central Information Commission took it upon itself to inspect some sites, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Oct 5, 2009, 24:50:37 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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With the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) turning a blind eye towards unauthorised constructions in the city, the Central Information Commission (CIC) took it upon itself to inspect some sites.

After finding that unauthorised constructions existed, the commission sent show-cause notices to civic body officials for not furnishing information within the prescribed period of 30 days.

CIC commissioner Shailesh Gandhi now plans to write to the municipal commissioner about rampant unauthorised constructions taking place in Delhi and the corporation taking very little action to stop it.

Gandhi had got the inspection done after the civi agnecy feigned ignorance about the illegal constructions taking place in the city.

“The commission views with great distress the fact that organised illegal construction is being undertaken in the Capital, apparently with the collusion of the MCD and perhaps with other official bodies,” Gandhi said, in his order dated September 30.

The order was issued in a case of 65 Right to Information (RTI) applications of one Rajender Gupta regarding unauthorised construction in Shahdara South Zone of the civic agency.

Initially, the public information officer and superintendent engineer Ram Prakash had expressed ignorance about the illegal constructions.

When the CIC confronted him with its inspection of the sites along with video-graphed evidence, Prakash admitted to the illegal constructions but expressed his inability to book the violators for a year.

“The PIO said the demolition action is taken up depending on the whim and the will of the junior staff,” the CIC order said.

Gandhi said it is apparent that the MCD officials were interested only in covering up those indulging in illegal construction.

“A clear modus operandi which emerges in this case is that an illegal building is constructed in three to six months and during this period neither any cognisance of any complaints is taken nor any information is provided under the RTI Act,” the CIC order said, while hoping that the MCD will enforce rule of the land.

“After the whole building is constructed, it is probably claimed as an old building which needs to be regularised.”

The MCD has been asked to submit a written reply by October 20 to the penalty notice.

Under the RTI law, a maximum penalty of Rs 25,000 can be imposed on a public information officer for delay in providing the information.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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