After a three-year legal battle, bulldozers finally rolled onto the banks of the Ichamati river on Wednesday morning as the administration launched a demolition drive to enforce a court order against alleged illegal constructions on the riverbed.
Amid heavy security and heightened tension, authorities began razing the 'City Guest House', while the demolition of the nearby 'Disha Guest House' was temporarily deferred after its owner sought three days to remove furniture and documents from the premises.
The eviction drive, supervised by the Basirhat subdivisional administration, witnessed the deployment of a massive police contingent along with fire brigade, disaster management teams and life-support ambulance teams, executive magistrates and municipal engineers to prevent any untoward incident, as anxious residents gathered along the Ichamati riverfront.
Taki Municipality chairman Somnath Mukherjee said the demolition stemmed from a public interest litigation filed around three years ago by a lawyer who alleged that several guest houses were constructed by illegally encroaching upon the Ichamati river char (silt bed).
Following Calcutta High Court's directive ordering the removal of the structures, notices were served on the owners concerned three years ago, granting them time to comply voluntarily, but nothing happened. On June 22, the high court gave a fresh directive for demolition with a three-week deadline.
Mukherjee said that although permission for construction had initially been granted after scrutiny of land documents, subsequent verifications revealed serious violations of building norms. "The most significant irregularity was that the mandatory Completion Certificate (CC) was never obtained from the municipality after construction," he said.
He made it clear that the action would not end with the two guest houses. According to him, the municipality identified 56 suspected illegal constructions across the Taki municipal area and served notices on their owners. Of these, at least 13 were found to have serious documentary irregularities. "The drive against illegal constructions will continue in phases," the chairman said.
Advocate Omar Farooq, one of the petitioners in the case, welcomed the demolition, claiming it marked a significant step towards restoring the ecological balance of the Ichamati. "The Ichamati ecosystem had been under constant threat for years. This eviction has opened the way for the river to regain its natural character," he said.
Calling the operation "the end of years of arrogance and oppression", Farooq alleged that several illegal activities, including cross-border smuggling with Bangladesh, had flourished around the unauthorised guest houses. "The cultural and social atmosphere for which Taki was once known had been severely damaged. This demolition became possible only after a second public interest litigation was filed with substantial evidence," he claimed.