Residents pay for the sins of builders and BBMP officials

Bengaluru: “We woke up with the shock of our lives today when the earthmovers, along with buses filled with policemen, hustled through our street starting the demolition work. We were not intimated about anything about this except for few men who came the previous day doing some markings on our house walls outside and on our compounds,” said Srikanth Kanchi, who owns a two-bedroom house on a 30X40 plot in Avani Sringerinagar in Arekere.

“I have an A-Khata for this ground plus first floor house on my name. I have all documents including building construction sanction plan. I have been paying property taxes regularly over the last 10 years and how can this be an illegal property?” asks Srikanth.

“Only God knows where the Raja Kaluve runs through as it is 22 years since this layout was formed. The layout was formed in 1994 by two people named Samiullah and L.K. Sathyanarayana, who sold to all of us residents here,” said. Preethi Kanchi, wife of Srikanth, who works as a HR professional.

“Each one of us when we built our homes, BBMP officials visited the spot, did their surveys, sanctioned the plans and even told us to plant a tree,” she said adding “Nobody even hinted to us about an existence of a Raja Kaluve going through this place. Only after these many years, the authorities woke up after a rain flooded Kodichikkanahalli last week.”

Both Srikanth and his pregnant wife were seen running around with a file filled with their building documents pleading with the BBMP engineers and even the BBMP commissioner, who visited the spot around noon to consider not demolishing their house at least on humanitarian grounds, but the officials weren’t considerate enough to listen to their pleas.

“Even though the residents have Khatas or plan approvals from the authorities, that all have been fabricated by officials and builders, who have connived and colluded with the irregularity. We don’t even have to issue a notice for demolition as the houses have been constructed on the storm water drain as per our records,” Manjunath Prasad, BBMP commissioner told Deccan Chronicle.

Nagaraj Ramachandra, a resident who built the first house in the layout will lose four shops that he had given away for rent in the ground floor and his first floor house where he stays as the entire construction sits on the 2.44 metre width of storm water drain. Nagaraj is no exception, house no. 83, belonging to Anantha Padmanabhan, would lose its face to earth movers of the BBMP, which will continue with their drive on Sunday.

Spare our houses, plead residents
The residents pleaded with the BBMP engineers that they could have the Raja Kaluve run through the road running parallel to the storm water drain, which is in front of all their houses, as an alternative.

“We are not challenging or opposing the authorities. Let them dig the road and make way for the storm water drain, so that it will not create any problem to any residents. This is an alternative and instead of going eight feet towards our houses, they can take 10 feet of the road as the gradient is towards the road side. We are only requesting them to consider us on humanitarian grounds. But the authorities reiterated that on humanitarian grounds, they are not willing to demolish midway through their properties instead they would take the 8-feet width from the front of their houses,” the resident said.