KOLKATA: If you are planning to buy a flat, before going into an agreement with the promoter check the Kolkata Municipal Corporation website to know whether the building has a legal sanction from the civic body’s buildings wing. Taking a lesson from the Garden Reach building collapse, the civic brass has decided to upload all necessary information about under-construction or already constructed buildings across 144 KMC wards.
The municipal commissioner, Dhaval Jain, has asked the buildings department officials to prepare a ward-wise list of unauthorized buildings and upload the same on the KMC website for the benefit of potential flat-buyers.
“We have asked the buildings department officials in the borough to prepare a detailed list of buildings, constructed or under-construction where the promoter has not applied for a building sanctioned plan. Once this list of unauthorized buildings is compiled, we will upload the same on our website so that the citizens come to know about such illegal buildings and are spared from getting duped,” said a KMC buildings department official.
A KMC buildings department official conceded that on several occasions, unscrupulous promoters had forged documents relating to building sanction plans to impress prospective buyers. “On several occasions flat owners have knocked on our doors only when we have spotted a particular building as illegal and issued a notice for its demolition. We know these buyers were duped by the promoters,” said the civic official.
This is not all. In a bid to safeguard the interests of flat buyers, the KMC buildings department is also planning to upload the legal status of a constructed apartment or housing complex on the website. “Several real estate promoters are in the habit of taking up additional construction of floors that amounts to gross violation of building rules. In such cases we keep the completion certificate on hold till the additional constructions are pulled down or minor deviations are regularized. From now onwards, the prospective flat buyers will come to know about the extent of violation of building rules from the information about the already constructed buildings and they can plan accordingly,” said a KMC official.KMC sources said the task of identifying the unauthorized buildings in areas across 144 wards was gaining momentum. “We have asked the sub-assistant and assistant engineers to conduct a survey of the underconstruction buildings under their jurisdiction and send a weekly report to the headquarters. Once these ward-wise reports are compiled, the information about the legal status of the buildings will be uploaded on the website,” said the official.
