A bunch of people, not considered worthy of a studious audience by the Netas for decades, to the extent that they lived in homes they couldn’t rightfully call their own, has suddenly come into focus this election season in the national capital.
From the day the Union government cleared the proposal to accord ownership rights to residents of Delhi’s unauthorised colonies, all parties worth their weight on the city’s political landscape, literally fell over each other to not just woo the settlers but also appropriate credit for the move.
However, while the Centre has set in motion the process of handing deeds to residents, who have long been seeking registration of their properties, experts have sounded a note of caution saying the consequence of moving forward with the regularisation process sans provision of amenities and guidelines could be grave. They said that fallout could even be in the nature of a fire or a building collapse.
There are an estimated 1,731 colonies in the city, excluding nonaffluent sections. These include Sangama Vihar, Kirari, Burari, Krishna Nagar and Najafgarh, among other areas. Those home to affluent sections number 69. They include Shanti Kunj in Mehrauli, Defence Enclave in Mahipalpur, Neb Sarai Extension in South Chhatarpur and Sainik Farms Western Avenue in central Delhi, among others. In total, the city is home to 1,797 unauthorised colonies, accounting for nearly a third of its population.
Implications
Quizzed if the big-ticket announcement bodes well for the unauthorised colonies, Arunava Dasgupta, an urban planner, claimed the Centre rushed into a decision to bestow property rights on settlers of such colonies without understanding or being seized of its implications.“The idea of giving one ownership for his land may also mistakenly lull him into a sense that he is at liberty to use that piece of land as a source of income or revenue and he may even develop it in any way he wants. There isn’t a set of guidelines to ensure that the piece of land will remain the way it is once it is in the hands of the owner. He may even put his property in the real estate market in the quest of an overnight windfall,” Dasgupta told this correspondent.
“If I have a piece of land or property rightfully bestowed on me, my first impulse would be to use it as security for a loan to develop it in a way, which would enable me to derive some commercial or other benefits out of it. This is one big change that is likely if and when the (central) government follows through on its decision to regularise unauthorised colonies,” he added.
These are few of the factors that may result in the colonies staring at a significant transformation if the owners are accorded property rights in the absence of binding regulations, Dasgupta said. He added, “This is where the role of a government should come into play in a major way.”
“When a colony is up for a transformation of this kind, the authority concerned should anticipate as much and guide the residents through the process. In the absence of any building norms or regulations, specific to such locations, the situation may be similar to what we see in urban villages. Maximising revenues or profits from the properties would be the norm then. It might not be a sustainable template or model for the owners, given the available infrastructure and resources, or the lack of them. An owner may overbuild, prompting far too many people to take up residence in his property,” the urban planner opined.“It might result in a very chaotic built form, putting lives at risk by raising the possibility of fires and other urban hazards such as congestion,” he added.
Need for guidelines
Dasgupta stressed the need for a developers’ guideline, which senses a certain level of transformation of these colonies post regularisation, and, accordingly sets terms for it.“If we don’t have a set of guidelines, we’ll end up staring at another urban state, which has its own problems,” he said, adding, “While the decision is, by all appearances, a political one, mechanisms haven’t been put in place to guide the people through transformation in these areas.”Advocating location-specific guidelines, he argued that absence of regulations will result in concrete structures being raised without conforming to norms.
“There will not only be random construction but the quality of construction will also be called into question. Either the buildings won’t be structurally sound or they won’t have the necessary amenities in place that will help them survive disasters such as a fire or an earthquake,” he said.“The set of by-laws that may work in Kalkaji, may not work in Govindpuri. What we have currently is a set of regulations that are binding on everyone. At times, in places, we need a specific set of norms that will keep buildings standing even in the face of disasters,” he said.
A case in point
In a recent incident that serves as a classic illustration of the risks that unplanned buildings stare at, nine persons died and three others were injured after a fire ripped through a three-storey building in outer Delhi’s Kirari. An inquest post the fire tragedy, one of the city’s worst in recent times, revealed the ground floor of the residential building was used a godown for cloth. The fire, the probe revealed, started in the ground floor warehouse and spread in a matter of minutes.
In several other recent fire incidents, the fire brigade had trouble coursing through congested lanes and reaching the scene on time. In one such case, a 47-year-old woman died and eight others were injured after the roof of a building collapsed in Uttam Nagar. The responders, firefighters and civil defence personnel couldn’t reach the scene and mount a rescue effort on time. Dasgupta said looking at how a certain situation can lead to a disaster is the first step to putting in place a mechanism to prevent it. “A decentralised apparatus hasn’t been put in place. It could be in the nature of what we call a local area plan. One has to make an entire map to highlight disasters arising out of our own mistakes. It is rampant everywhere in the country,” he said.
Unauthorised by law?
Santosh Singh, an urban planner based in Jaipur, said ‘unauthorised colony’ isn’t a popular coinage in his city as it is here in Delhi. “In Jaipur, we call it illegal construction. However, the thing about unauthorised construction in Jaipur is that the developers still follow the building by-laws,” he said.
While there are benefits galore of raising unplanned properties, there are cons as well of residents running commercial enterprises in a locality, among others. “In many cases, people live and work out of their properties. If you’re authorising properties for residential use, they cannot be used for commercial ends. They either set up commercial businesses in their properties or rent them out. They move out and encroach a space somewhere else. When the government talks about authorising such properties, it spares not a word about developing amenities,” said Singh, who was formerly with the Jaipur Development Authority.
Claiming people have been settling illegally on the banks of the Hindon, in Uttar Pradesh, he said there will come a time soon when the colonies there would be labelled unauthorised and the government will moot a proposal to authorise them.There’s a need to build proper infrastructure, as there is a risk of flooding and other disasters in such areas, he said.“A government seldom has the money to provide sewage connections to everyone. It develops a colony only when they have the resources to do so. It then puts a legal stamp on it and derives political capital out of it,” he said.
10-member panel
In March 2019, the Union cabinet constituted a 10-member committee, under Delhi’s Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal, to recommend the process of granting ownership and transfer rights to residents in unauthorised colonies. Earlier this month, Union Housing Minister Hardeep Singh Puri handed conveyance deeds and registry papers for properties to 20 colony residents.
However, the residents seemed unaware of the pitfalls in the process. All they seemed to care about was that the government had taken a major step to fulfilling a promise it made to him and his kind.
While 11 of the 20 colony residents are from Suraj Park colony, 9 are from Raja Vihar.
Ikramuddin Chaudhary, RWA president of Abul Fazal Enclave, said the regularisation process was taking time. “There are no visible signs of it happening anywhere. I have only read about it in the social media. Some people are already complaining about it. We have some amenities but are deprived of many others. Only when the government gives us all the amenities that we ought to have, would we truly derive the benefits of this announcement,” Chaudhary said.
Krishan Kumar (45), a Raja Vihar resident who was among the 20 to be handed registries, said the lanes in his colony are congested. “Buildings flout fire safety norms. There are no measures in place to prevent disasters. The government has to find a way forward,” he said.