'Govt. will not spare erring builders'

By Manas Dasgupta

AHMEDABAD, FEB. 21. The Gujarat Minister of State for Home, Mr. Haren Pandya, said that the Government will not spare any erring builder whose faulty constructions led to the collapse of over a hundred buildings here in the recent earthquake. But all the promises may come to nought if the Ahmedabad Urban Development Authority (AUDA) has its way, with the original files and records of many of these apparent faulty buildings reportedly missing.

The officials of the AUDA point to a fire that broke out in the record room of the Authority in 1991, in which, it was claimed many of the records were destroyed. And since then the AUDA was stacking the files at all and sundry places till a new record room was set up seven years later in 1998. But by then the damage was done.

The fire was believed to be an act of sabotage. Taking advantage of the communal riots, some miscreants reportedly broke into the AUDA office and set the record room afire. With the collapse of some of the buildings in the earthquake, most of which were given the initial clearance between 1990 and 1996, the officials have reasons to doubt that the fire was a deliberate act of some of the builders to destroy the evidence.

Among the files that were reportedly destroyed was the original building plan of the Mansi complex, one of whose multi- storyed tower was the casualty in the earthquake killing 57 people, and Sundervan in Ranip, which the AUDA sources said was cleared for a 16-flat structure. But the builders later added 12 more to it.

While the city Police Commissioner, Mr. P. C. Pande, admitted that some of the files had not reached the police, an AUDA official said it would be very difficult to trace them. In the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation area, the authorities have no answer as to how the basement shops in some of the towers which were ordered to be closed down after the heavy floods last monsoon, have started functioning again after the earthquake.

A commercial complex, in which a senior Cabinet Minister in the Keshubhai Patel Ministry was believed to be a partner, had developed serious cracks. It was declared unusable and the authorities sealed the building initially and cordoned off the area pending its demolition.

Suddenly, it was declared safe with some repairs. Despite protests from some of the earlier occupants, repairing was initiated but the AMC has again ``temporarily withdrawn'' the building use permission.

The disappearance of the files and the callous attitude of the authorities delay bringing the erring builders to book. The residents of the collapsed buildings are staging dharnas demanding immediate action. After days of dharna by the parents of the 32 higher secondary students who were crushed under the debris of a school in Maninagar area, the police have arrested its builder and his two sons.

It was found that the three-storyed structure rested on just four-foot deep foundation, such was the carelessness of the builders. The police have a long way to go to overcome the strong politician-builder nexus to take action against the guilty.

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