Bhubaneswar, June 7: An under-construction multi-storey behind the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanum kalyan mandap near Jayadev Vihar Square has violated the development authority's height restrictions.
However, the authority has done nothing about it except for sending a routine stop-construction notice, though highly placed sources said construction at the site was still on.
Documents in possession of The Telegraph show that the Bhubaneswar Development Authority is aware of the situation that while permission was granted for 14.97 metres, the structure had already reached 16.30 metres in "deviation of the approved plan".
Moreover, apart from the deviation from the height regulations, the multi-storey's location has also raised eyebrows.
The location is sensitive, because arms and ammunition of the city police are kept in the reserve police facility nearby. The general administration department, which owns all government land within the city limits and on the outskirts, had, in a letter on February 3, asked the authority's vice-chairman to make a joint inquiry into the matter, specifically focusing on how the plan of a multi-storey structure had been approved given its closeness to the reserve police area. The issue was raised, as the memory of Maoist raids in Nayagarh town, where the rebels had looted the armoury and killed policemen in February 2008, is still fresh in the minds of the people.
Housing and urban development minister Pushpendra Singh Deo told The Telegraph that he would look into the matter. "I will go through the necessary papers and see what action can be taken in this case," he said.
Vice-chairman of the development authority Krishan Kumar declined to comment on the issue, saying that the plan had been approved on August 11, 2009, when he was not in office. "It was not approved during my tenure," he said.
Police commissioner R.P. Sharma said the police had already raised the security issue in the past on the "appropriate" forum.
Lawyer and human rights activist Prabir Das said demolition orders were issued under the Odisha Development Authority (ODA) Act, 1982, in case of violations, but authority often fails to act in case of big players.
Incidentally, this is not the first case when the authority has showered its favour on private builders. It has two sets of building plan approval rules for government agencies and private parties.
While in 2010, a plan to build a multi-storey office on the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation premises could not materialise due to objections from the authority as the area fell within a "restricted" zone, a real-estate developer, however, managed to get permission to erect a multi-storey just opposite the corporation office.
"Things are fishy here. On one hand, the authority denies the civic body plan for a four-storey structure, but on the other hand, it allows a private builder to erect a similar construction in the same area," said a corporation engineer.
The comptroller and auditor general (CAG) of India, too, in its audit report this year, raised questions as to how the real-estate developer got the authority's nod for its high-rise that fell within 100 metres of the National Highway No. 203 and was a heritage zone.
On this, the version of the authority's vice-chairman, in the CAG report, says: "While despite issuing stop-construction notice the real-estate developer continued to develop the building project, the restriction for heritage zone was lifted through amendment of the Planning and Building Standards Regulations."
The "restriction" by the authority to facilitate construction by real-estate developers was, however, lifted between December 2008 and October 2013, the audit report states.
