Illegal shops fit the bill

MUMBAI, June 9: Sohanjit Singh, a resident of Adarsh Nagar shanty colony in Chembur, is a worried man. He has not received his property asse...

MUMBAI, June 9: Sohanjit Singh, a resident of Adarsh Nagar shanty colony in Chembur, is a worried man. He has not received his property assessment bills for the last three years. And now his friends tell him that somebody else has been paying his bills all this while!

But how? Well, it sounds impossible, but a shopkeeper on the R C Road near his house has been given the same ward assessment number that his hut has and that8217;s where his bills go. But, why is the shopkeeper paying if they are not his bills? Because his shop is housed in an illegal structure and the BMC bills would only lend legitimacy to it. He isn8217;t the only one, there are 27 others, all on the RC Road, who are using this method to protect their businesses from demolition squads. Now there is evidence to suggest that they all bribed BMC officials to acquire the ward assessment numbers. And for each one of them, there is a poor hutment dweller in Adarsh Nagar waiting for his property assessment bills and worried about his future.

Butironically the future of these illegal galas seems secure. For, BMC is already thinking of providing them alternate sites and compensation ahead of their demolition under a road-widening programme! If this happens, the hutments in Adarsh Nagar slums may lose their status as regularised structures. That would make a mockery of the BMC Act for these hutments have been there since 1962 and deserve to be regularised. On the other hand, the illegal shops that occupy a large part of the RC road and are a fit case for demolition, were built in 1984 and have no legal status. In fact, the ward assessment numbers that they have acquired with dubious means, too are registered with the BMC as quot;residential structuresquot; and not as hotels and grocery stores. These structures also do not find any mention in the state government8217;s census of shops and establishments conducted in 1976. But with a ward assessment number and probably receipts of bills paid over the last two years, it would be difficult to prove their illegalstatus.

And just how these shop owners managed to pull off the impossible feat is a long and complicated story. It all started in 1995, when B D Rangparia, Assistant Collector and Assessor of the M West ward, prepared Tabulated Ward Report TWR proposals for regularising property assessment of 306 hutments in Adarsh Nagar slums. However, a hotelier, who owns two restaurants on the R C Road and several others across the city, mobilised other shop owners and together they bribed some BMC officials and got their names inserted in the TWR against ward assessment numbers of some residents of the Adarsh Nagar slums. This led to duplication of a ward assessment numbers. It also amounted to regularisation of the illegal shops. For the record now showed they existed before 1962.

Now, the existence of the hutment dwellers is in jeopardy, as assessment bills are being issued to the owners of the shops with whom they now share their ward assessment numbers. However, Additional Municipal Commissioner V Ramani,maintains that the matter is being quot;investigated.quot; quot;Only those residential structures that existed before 1962 will be protected. I have called for all the relevant documents and will also ask the assessment department as to why, if at all, the records were manipulated,quot; Ramani said. He also assured the status of the occupants of the hutments who have stopped receiving their assessment bills would not be changed. quot;We will rely on the past bills and protect their rights,quot; he said. What he, however, doesn8217;t mention is the time it would take.