Sealing orders gather dust in civic body office for 2 years

Kuldip Bhatia

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Ludhiana, October 5

Conniving staff can go to the extent of disobeying ‘sealing orders’ for a building issued by the Municipal Commissioner when it was under construction during 2016, seems a far-fetched idea – but this is what actually happened in the case of an illegal commercial building raised in Sarabha Nagar here.

It was in mid-2016 that a builder started construction work for raising a commercial building by clubbing property numbers 56 and 57 in E Block of the posh Sarabha Nagar just in front of Kipps Market. The construction activity was a brazen violation of building bylaws as well as illegal change of land use as no building plan for the same was approved by the MC.

Documents and other relevant record (copies of which are in possession of The Tribune) indicate that the MC building branch issued a notice (540/ATP-D dated September 26, 2016) to the owner to immediately stop the construction work otherwise the premises would be sealed. The field staff is said to have visited the site with police force and ongoing construction was stopped. Thereafter, on October 26, 2016, the orders for sealing of the building were issued by the MC Commissioner.

What transpired after the sealing orders of the illegal building were issued is mired in mystery. Sources in the MC claim that all of a sudden, the file concerning the said building went missing, or else was deliberately held up by somebody who had a vested interest. As a result neither the illegal commercial building was sealed nor demolished.

“The construction work was completed in December 2016 and after that a restaurant was opened in the said complex,” says the site visit report submitted by the then area building inspector (Harjit Singh) submitted on January 19, 2017. The relevant record had also made a note of the fact that during the period September to December 2016, two building inspectors – Navneet Khokhar and Saurabh Khanna, were deployed in Zone D where the illegal construction had taken place.

At the time the sealing orders of the building issued by the MC Commissioner were gathering dust in the building branch, yet another show cause notice (895/ATP-D dated March 9, 2017) was issued to the owner of the property which again went unheeded.

But suddenly (obviously at the intervention of some senior official), things have started moving at a feverish pitch in the building branch with a fresh notice being issued to the property owner and steps under way to finally seal the building. “However, quite a few heads are expected to roll when facts of the matter would come in the open,” claim the sources.