FACT India

CM releases list of AIADMK allotments
Times of India (dated on December 10 2010)
Chennai: In the wake of media reports about misuse of government’s discretionary quota (GDQ) to dole out prime plots owned by the Tamil Nadu Housing Board (TNHB) to several judges, legislators and bureaucrats in recent years, chief minister M Karunanidhi on Thursday released the list of beneficiaries who had received plots under the GDQ during the erstwhile AIADMK government.
He said the AIADMK government too had given residential plots in Chennai in the names of wives and children of prominent politicians and IAS and IPS officials. The revelation is shocking as one of the allottees, Bhanumathi, wife of former AIADMK minister M Thambidurai, was given seven grounds of prime land (each ground is 2,400 sq ft) at upmarket Anna Nagar in 1993 during Jayalalithaa’s first tenure as CM.
The housing board had earlier revealed to TOI that from 2001 to 2006, when the AIADMK was in power, 1,500 units (plots and apartments) were released by the housing board under the GDQ. The board’s reaction was in response to a series of reports about misuse of GDQ by the administration that appeared in TOI this week.
The beneficiaries included several people working in the CM’s office. Many among them had received housing board plots by giving false declarations that they did not own a house or housing plots in urban centres at the time of allotment. The list Karunanidhi released on Thursday has several prominent beneficiaries. It includes AIADMK labour union, which was given three grounds in Anna Nagar in 1993. D Natarajan, who was deputy secretary to the then CM, was given 6,784 sq ft at Tiruvanmiyur in 1994.
N Narayanan, who later became chief secretary in 2005, was given 4,115 sq ft land in the city way back in 1993. Former minister and AIADMK propaganda secretary K A Sengottaiyan’s son Kartheesan was allotted 4,535 sq ft land at Besant Nagar in 1995. Another former minister Nagoor Meeran’s wife Noor Jameela was given 2,559 sq ft land at Kottivakkam in 1993. Former housing minister S M Velusamy’s wife Bhanumathi was allotted a house in Coimbatore in 1993. Erstwhile South Chennai district secretary of AIADMK, Adhi Rajaram, was given 3,101 sq ft land in Chennai in 1995.
Senior IPS officials who benefited from the then government’s largesse include retired DGP Walter I Dawaram, CISF DG K Vijay Kumar and director of fire and rescue services, R Nataraj. Each one of them was given a 4,800 sq ft plot in the fast developing Sholinganallur area, on Old Mahabalipuram Road, in 2004.
Justice SR Singaravelu was given two plots at Sholinganallur in 2005. Bhoopathi, late M G Ramachandran’s driver, got 3,600 sq ft.

Lack of powers puts CMDA in fix .
Times of India (dated on December 10 2010)
Chennai: With just five officers in the rank of deputy and assistant planners, monitoring unauthorised constructions has become impractical for CMDA. Lack of co-operation from other civic agencies, including the Chennai Corporation, has rendered them defenceless.
The five-member enforcement wing of CMDA is loaded with responsibilities, including issuing completion certificates to buildings, addressing petitions from the public on unauthorised structures, replying to queries under Right to Information Act, besides conducting field-visits to the building sites spread across the 1,189 sq km Chennai Metropolitan Area.
“With the existing manpower, the enforcement section can’t handle even a street,” said a government official. It explains why builders continue to blatantly violate the development control rules even near ward and zonal offices of the corporation. Majority of the buildings that violate rules are approved by the corporation for construction of ground and first floor. They are later turned into multi-storied buildings, thus falling under the purview of CMDA. “The local bodies could have curtailed such violations in the initial stage itself,” the official said.
The authorities said that builders getting completion certificates for unauthorised buildings based on court orders were adding to the trouble. They get connections from the Metrowater and electricity board based on the certificates. The completion certificates are normally given by CMDA upon verifying the building plan and actual construction. At least 1,057 builders had obtained favourable orders from the court, records said. “Though the court said that it is open to the CMDA to initiate action, it is impossible to intervene, once the building is sold and occupied,” sources said.
With the elected representatives peddling influence, the civic officials said their hands were tied. Many residential properties are gradually converted into commercial establishments. “It does not go unnoticed by the local elected representatives,” said C Ramakrishnan, secretary, federation of Adyar Residents Association.

6,500 AND COUNTING...
Times of India (dated on september 6th 2010)
Of The Buildings Identified For Violating Rules, CMDA Has Managed To Seal Only 27 So Far Chennai: It seems that there is no end to the menace called unauthorised constructions. Sample this: As many as 6,500 buildings have been ‘identified’ in the Chennai Metropolitan Area during the last three years as violating the development control rules of the Town and Country Planning Act, 1971 while the regulatory bodies, including the CMDA, could manage to seal only 27 buildings till date.
It was revealed during the monitoring committee meet held at the CMDA office on Wednesday. The enforcement agencies, including corporation, municipalities, town panchayats and panchayat unions, have sent stop-work notices to 6,438 builders giving ample time to restore the building as per the approved plan while another 4,161 were served with demolition notices to ‘correct’ themselves or face the bulldozer. There are 163 files pertaining to lock-and-seal, gathering dust in these offices (see GFX on the right).
This highlights once again the poor enforcement by the regulatory bodies. “Enforcement has wholly collapsed. Agencies like CMDA and the corporation are helpless when major violators are protected by the government, which has even gone to the extent of issuing ordinances,” said MG Devasahayam, a former IAS officer. Devasahayam is a member of the monitoring committee, constituted by the high court to look into the unauthorised structures covered under various regularisation schemes introduced by the state governments since 1999.
Most of the unauthorised buildings are in areas such as George Town, T Nagar, Mylapore, Tiruvanmiyur where old settlements are giving way to new multi-storied buildings. Largescale violations have also been found in areas like Saidapet, Chetpet and southern suburbs such as Kottivakkam and residential colonies in Alandur municipality where the real estate industry is booming unlike never before. “These 10,600 buildings are only the tip of an iceberg. There must be more than a lakh such illegal buildings, which are still unidentified,” government sources told TOI.
A study by the Chennai Corporation and CMDA in 2007 — following directions from the monitoring committee — in Usman Road (from Usman Road to Prakasam Salai) and Ranganathan Street revealed that 64 buildings (28 special buildings (beyond three floors) and 35 multi-storeyed buildings) have blatantly violated rules on floor space index, plot coverage, car parking and front set-back. A multistoryed building, bearing door no. 43 in Ranganathan Street ought to have provided 90 slots for four wheelers as per development control rules. But the builder has not set aside space to park even a single car.
The floor space index (FSI) of several of these identified buildings have gone beyond 5, even as the rules permit only 2.5. FSI is the ratio between the built-up area allowed and plot area available. “In fact, the monitoring committee was contemplating stringent action against these offenders when the state brought out an ordinance in July 2007 under the pretext of safeguarding the poor people. There is no fear of law and everyone is violating the rule. It is detrimental to the quality of urban life,” Devasahayam said. The Supreme Court in its 2006 ruling observed that Chennai was unlivable due to flourishing unauthorised buildings.
Interestingly, the corporation has given a clean chit to certain special and multi-storeyed buildings on Arcot Road that they identified as violating rules. The corporation has told the state government that they could not find deviations in 20 of those buildings indentified. A senior government official said, “At least 90% of the buildings have deviations and any planner can easily figure out the violations”.