Bengaluru: How will you feel when BBMP officials suddenly walk into to your house, which you built with your sweat and blood, and ask you to vacate it because your neighbour’s building was built without following any standards and has started tilting? Also, how will you take it if the officials say that BBMP will not be responsible for the damage caused to your building?
In a matter of just two days, two buildings - one at Jayanagar and one at Yeshwathpur started tilting, posing threat to nearby buildings.
Ask D.S. Rajashekar, president of Citizens of Bangalore on what should be done and he will say, “At Jayanagar, a five-storey building was being built on a site dimension of just 30x40 feet. Every single ward will have ‘ward inspectors’ whose job is to inspect the area and prevent such gross violations.”
It is due to the greed of some citizens, who build floor after floor to increase rental income and this could not happen without connivance of corrupt BBMP officials, Rajashekar said.
In such cases, where neighbours building is getting affected for no fault of theirs, the guilty BBMP officials’ salary should be deducted and paid for the compensation, he remarked.
Suresh Hari, Vice President, CREDAI said, “BBMP has laid down many standard operating procedures right from mandatory soil testing to column size to mixing used. But a majority of these are flouted after receiving Commencement Certificate (CC), as citizens do not hire qualified engineers for their projects.”
He pointed out that only after soil testing, a qualified engineer can decide on how many floors can be built, what should be the depth of foundation and other specifications. Only a qualified expert can assess this, he added.
He said citizens mainly aim to complete their building in a limited budget and do not mind handing over the project to mestri (construction supervisor). “When they take up the project to complete it within a specified budget prescribed by the building owners, they change building plans, use substandard material and ultimately the quality of the building suffers, he explained. Repeated calls to Mayor Sampath Raj drew no response.
