Govt orders review of all MHADA buildings

This was stated by minister of state for housing Raj Purohit, who spoke to Express Newsline at the site of the building crash.

“This is a very serious matter since the building was rebuilt using reinforced cement concrete (RCC) slabs by MHADA barely 14 years ago,” said the minister who had visited the building four days before the collapse.“We are looking for a suitable investigating officer to conduct the investigations,” Purohit said, adding that the officer’s name would be announced on Tuesday.

He explained that there were three categories of buildings which collapsed- dilapidated buildings that had already been put on the danger list by MHADA, those built by MHADA like Ganesh Bhavan and private dilapidated buildings. Over a 100 labourers and fire brigade personnel continued to remove the debris through late last night.

A survivor Sukanraj Jain Porwal was rescued after he spent over 20 hours under the debris of the five-storeyed building. The body of Tolaram Mali was removed from the debris this morning, while the three bodies were identified as those of Ramlal Mali, Madhusudhan Joshi and Ramesh Prajapati continue to be trapped under concrete beams.

BMC officials had hired a private contractor to cut through the cement concrete beams to extricate the bodies. The contractor was to bring in heavy duty concrete cutting machines to assist in the cutting late this evening.“There are very few residents in buildings in Kalbadevi, since many of them have either sold out or rented their houses to commercial establishments,” explained a local cloth merchant Shailesh Pathak.

Many residents have alleged collusion of building contractors and MHADA officials who used substandard building materials for construction.

“This was a residential building. Who gave them permission to let out their premises to commercial establishments who stored heavy merchandise in the building,” retorted an angry MHADA engineer, pointing to the cloth bales spilling out of the debris of the building.