New Delhi: A round of blame game started Monday between govt authorities a day after the Satya Niketan building collapse.
Corporation officials said these colonies were not given benefits similar to those available to other residential areas in Delhi Master Plan (MPD) 2021, where buildings can have a permissible height of up to 17.5 metres. “While PGs and hostels are permitted on residential plots under mixed-use regulations, provided they abut a minimum road width between 9m and 18m, in the case of resettlement colonies falling in E, F and G category, such facilities can run on 6-metre-wide roads. He said during the one and a half years of BJP governance in Delhi, six major incidents of building collapse have taken place in which 35 people have lost their lives.
Because the building owner tried changing the structure without permission or taking any help of a structural engineer, an incident like this occurs.
“This paved the way for illegal vertical expansions,” they said. These are old constructions with load-bearing walls and not columns, so any mistake can lead to such an accident,” said an MCD official. “While MPD 2021 is silent on redevelopment in resettlement colonies, the new (2047) MPD also lacks defined norms,” said corporation officials. One of them said resettlement colonies have been issued standard building plans that permit ground-floor construction with one room on the first floor. “In case of unauthorised colonies, too, MPD norms won’t be of much help,” said another official. On whether any survey was conducted to check if a standard building plan was being followed or if there are cases of violations in such resettlement colonies after the plots are allotted, DDA said it has no information on this. “But yes, every development or construction needs to get its building plan sanctioned by the concerned local body,” it said. “Delhi govt has not learnt any lesson as it ignores every such incident to put the lives of the people at grave risk,” he said, while also blaming MCD for negligence and demanding the resignation of the MCD commissioner.
including Satya Niketan, to the absence of a clear policy for redevelopment, former officials associated with Delhi Development Authority (DDA) claimed that a majority of illegal constructions in these colonies came up after the areas were transferred to MCD While Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) attributed unchecked vertical expansion in resettlement colonies. However, such planned structures are now hardly visible, with buildings having expanded vertically over the years without required approval. Political parties, too, were sucked into the blame game. Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee president Devender Yadav sat on a dharna Monday at the site of the collapsed building, demanding justice.