Bribing official may not have helped Kapil

MUMBAI: Can you make changes to buildings you own without permission, and then get them legalised with a bribe?

MUMBAI: Can you make changes to buildings you own without permission, and then get them legalised with a bribe?

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Officials said there are no provisions that give them such powers.

This means, any local official asking comedian Kapil Sharma for a bribe to regularise an alleged illegal extension to his office would not have helped.

In Kapil’s case, a senior civic official said, the stopwork notice was issued after local residents filed a complaint on the civic body’s online system for reporting encroachments and illegal construction.

The action was taken after this, according to procedures — first, a notice was sent and when there was no response, a civic team partly demolished the structure, the official said.

“When illegal extensions are reported through a complaint or our survey, we send stopwork notices and give the owner time to reply,” said another official.

The official said repair and reconstruction is approved only after citizens apply to a ward office or the building proposal department.

If it is a tenable change, ward offices are authorised to permit the repair work, the official said.

But if the repairs are major — such as structural changes to walls and columns, the renovation is allowed only after a certified architect approves, the officials said.

To reduce the chances of corruption in providing such permissions, officials said the civic body is planning to initiate a self-certification process that can be signed by the architect carrying out the repairs.

The move is aimed at stopping officials from harassing the citizens, after several complaints of threats and blackmails.