8 die in Pune building collapse
Eight persons were killed and eleven were injured when an under-construction four-storey building collapsed at Sahakar Nagar in Pune on Monday afternoon.
Most of the victims were construction workers and their families and were living in the precarious structure. Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) said that the building that stood on Taljai hillock had been illegally built.
The deceased include six men, two women and one child. Three men, four women and four children were rescued from the rubble. However, they all have suffered major or minor injuries. Rescue operations continued till late into the night and at the time of going to press one person was still feared to be trapped in the debris.
The place where the incident took place has several illegal structures that have been haphazardly built. “The building was largely occupied by the construction workers and their families. Another family had rented out a different portion of the building. A team from the National Disaster Response Force equipped with rescue tools were pressed into service along with the fire-brigade,” Mahesh Pathak, municipal commissioner of Pune told this newspaper on the phone.
On September 1, the PMC had issued the demolition notice to its developers of the collapsed building. “We had issued a notice to its owners. It was because of the Ganesh festival that the police was busy with bandobast and the PMC’s demolition activity had to be stalled. For the past three months, we have served notices to 2,300 illegal constructions out of which 880 have been demolished. We have lodged a complaint against the owners,” said Mr Pathak.
Local corporator Shivlal Bhosale alleged that he had complained about the illegal structure to the municipal corporation but no action was initiated. Residents said that the local political leaders support illegal structures and low quality materials are used to build them.
Comments
Politicians helping the
panzerwagen
26 Sep 2012 - 16:45
Politicians helping the builder mafia is not a new thing. Not so far in the past, the TMC had acknowledged that 85% of the structures in Thane District were illegal, without specifying the grounds on which it held them illegal. The Supreme Court had issued an order to stop all illegal constructions in Thane District , still the illegal constructions are going on in contempt of the Supreme Court's order; and nobody is the least bit bothered. These builders build in a very haphazard manner in places like Mumbra, Kausa, Diva, Kalwa, etc; and as soon as one floor is finished, they bring in "residents" to stop the Municipal Authorities from demolishing these buildings. Then the same plan of action is used for the subsequent floors. Soon, you find shaky buildings without any proper permission, standing 5 or 6 floors tall with Water and Electricity Connections!!! The so called builder, who is just a tough character sells off the flats and leave the owners to their own devices. Who pays for Stamp Duty and Registeration of Flats? Who pays the VAT and Service Tax for these flats? Who arranges for forming and registration of a Co-operative Housing Society? Who gives an NOC or a OC for these flats? When and How is the Assessment Tax and Water Tax collected, when the building is not even acknowledged in the Municipal Records? How is it that the Municipal Authorities, the Forest Department (A lot of constructions go on on Forest Department Land, Mangrove Swamps, and other Coastal Regulatory Zones (CRZ) without a cheep out of the Authorities. All these people are playing with the lives of others who do not know the rules, nor the type of weak structure they live in. The Law Enforcement Machinery, the Courts of Law, the Collector, etc., are all powerless before these Builder Mafia and their politician God Fathers.
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