The Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) will pull down dangerously dilapidated buildings before the rainy season as they as pose serious threat to lives. There are more than 3,000 insecure structures in the city and out of these nearly 1,200 buildings have been declared as dangerously insecure.
The civic authorities have informed the police about these structures and the borough executive officers have been asked to keep a tab on them.
A senior civic official of the building department said the owners of these buildings have been given notices asking them to repair them. Also, the KMC has put up boards outside these structures requesting the occupants to vacate them.
Most of these buildings are situated in north Kolkata and parts of central Kolkata. In many of these houses, the civic authorities have failed to trace the owners and the buildings are being occupied by trespassers, who refuse to vacate the premises.
In 2020-21, around 20 people staying in old dilapidated buildings died after portions of these houses collapsed during monsoon. In Burrabazar, two people died after the roof of an old building caved in, in 2021.
Three people of an old structure, off Lenin Sarani, died after the staircase collapsed. Senior officials said the KMC will not take any more risk and before the rainy season some of the dangerously insecure dilapidated houses will be pulled down as they cause serious threat to people.
The civic authorities have so far sanctioned more than 100 building plans where the owners will pull down the old structures and set up new houses in their places with proper rehabilitation of the tenants.
Senior officials of the department said most of these old structures are more than century-old and have not been repaired for long and so the rain water system has become non-functional.
As a result, during heavy showers, the rain water gets accumulated on the roof causing pressure on the pillars of the buildings. The pillars fail to bear the weight and collapse.
They said in north Kolkata along the banks of river Hooghly, there are buildings which have been lying unoccupied for years and the KMC has failed to trace the owners. Most of these buildings were gifted to the mistress by their paramours.
The civic authorities are talking to legal experts about these premises particularly after they were pulled down.