Patna, May 29: Some bureaucrats are allegedly renting out their residential premises for commercial purposes. Taking note of this, the Bihar State Housing Board has served a notice on the Aniket Housing Society committee.
Sprawling over 86.58 cottahs of land of the housing board, several present and former bureaucrats stay in the society, also known as IAS Colony, at Srikrishna Nagar. The land has been divided into 25 plots with a small garden at the centre. Shops, private nursing homes and mobile towers have come up on some of these plots.
Sources said the anomaly was brought to the notice of the housing board recently. Consequently, the board issued a notice (number 3,225) to Aniket Housing Society committee on April 26 for alleged violation of Section 78 of the Bihar State Housing Board Act, 1982.
According to the housing board sources, a reputed private clinic at the entrance of the Aniket Housing Society is operating on a residential plot.
Beside the clinic, The Telegraph found a restaurant-cum-hotel. The others houses in the lane house corporate offices, animation studio, filament visual studio, retail dealer offices, kids’ school, girls’ hostel and guesthouses. There were mobile towers on the rooftop of two houses. Besides, banks, nursing homes, shops and public sector undertaking have come up in the houses facing the main road of Srikrishna Nagar.
Sources said the monthly rent of the restaurant-cum-hotel is Rs 1.10 lakh. The average monthly rent of a floor of a house in the colony varies between Rs 20,000 and Rs 30,000.
Some residents of the area complained of disturbance because of the commercial activities in the vicinity.
“It seems like absolute pandemonium when trucks honk in front of my home late in the night. They come to the office of a commodity dealer, which has come up in the house in front of my bungalow. I am aware of our society getting a notice against the commercial activities in the area. I believe the committee would respond to it after getting responses from all its members,” Mahesh Prasad, a retired IAS officer and the owner of plot number 25 of Aniket Housing Society, said.
R.S. Tiwari, the secretary of the Aniket Housing Society, could not be contacted because he is out of town at present.
