Building tilts onto neighbouring house in Kolkata

KOLKATA: A five-storey building on Shibtala Lane at Tiljala started tilting from Wednesday evening and came to rest onto the nextdoor highrise of the same height at a perilous angle of 10°- 15°, throwing the lid off the rampant illegal construction industry in the locality.

TOI had briefly reported on the tilting building on Page 1 in its Thursday’s edition.

Forget about the mandatory open space that a five-storey structure is supposed to leave all around it, the gap between it and the next building is so slim that the two together have earned the sobriquet of “Twin Towers”. Ironically, this narrow gap between the two structures have saved several lives as it has arrested the complete collapse of the five-storey house, which has come to rest onto the next tower.




The KMC buildings department records apparently don’t have any mention of the building or the contractor and according to a civic official, such was the case with 90% of the structures in Tiljala-Topsia.

According to the KMC buildings rules, for the construction of multi-storey buildings, the owners or contractors are supposed to compulsorily leave demarcated space around it, depending on the height of the structures. Going by the rulebook, a five-storey structure, like the one that has tilted, should have had 2m open space in front, 4m in the back and 1.5m and 2.5m on the two sides. Neither this house or any of the multi-storey structures in the area seems to have followed any of the rules, existing cheek by jowl and leaving any space for the safety of the occupants. Besides, the procedure and quality of the constructions never seemed to have been supervised. All these pointed to the gross negligence on the part of the KMC buildings department in enforcing the civic rules but some officials claimed that they were threatened into silence.

But civic bosses washed their hands of the incident, merely tagging the locality the “red zone” of the illegal construction industry in the city. “The area, where the building came up, falls in the red zone, so far as illegal constructions are concerned. Almost 90% of the houses have been built illegally. We don’t have any official record of the construction of the building that leaned dangerously onto another one,” said a buildings department official. A senior official claimed based on locals’ complaints, the department had in 2008, issued a stop-work notice to the contractor when the last two floors were being built. “But it had little effect as the contractor waited for a while, restarted the work and completed it in 2009,” he said.

The buildings department officials are apparently too scared to intervene in the unfettered illegal constructions in the “red zone” that extends up to Topsia and spills over to areas off Bypass. “Last year, a colleague tried to crack down on the unauthorized work rampant in this very Tiljala area. He was abused and threatened by thugs close to a developer, who in turn, is close to a ruling party leader,” said an official.

While developers have been minting money by building risky houses, Shibtala Lane residents have their fingers crossed. “We living in constant fear. Today, I saw at least six buildings around my house that may collapse at any point. All were built without civic sanction,” said Imtiaz Ahmed, who lives in asingle-storey house next to the tilted high-rise.