The Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority (CMDA), earlier Madras (before Madras turned Chennai following Bombay turning Mumbai!) Metropolitan Development Authority, is Chennai’s apex city development authority. The other authority is the Chennai Corporation.
The Chennai Corporation is under an elected Mayor (the heir apparent of DMK President, M. Karunanidhi) and is concerned with the overall development of the City. His Worshipful Mayor (as he is supposed to be addressed) M.K. Stalin, is a very active person. As Mayor he wished and worked for Singara Chennai (Beautiful Chennai), and even contracted an agency from Singapore(?) for garbage cleaning the city on a day to day basis. However, Chennai is now like a washed pig wallowing in the same old mire, and Stalin’s hopes have been dashed.
J. Jayalalithaa (the additional a at the end was added recently on the advice of her astrologers, which should make Murli Manohar Joshi at the Centre a greater devotee of Vedic astrology!) is back in the reckoning and her party the AIADMK is now in power in Tamil Nadu. If everything goes well, after the Assembly election in Andipatti on February 21, Jayalalithaa will again prove to be the Come-back Queen (as she is often characterised in the Press) as Chief Minister.
Readers might wonder if the above two paragraphs in a review on CMDA is a digression. It is not. For, the CMDA and the Chennai Corporation are like Siamese twins, though the second is the eldest, and both are relevant in a review on either or both.
While the Corporation is responsible for issuing Plans, Permits, and so on for constructions up to two stories, the CMDA is responsible for structures with more than two stories, classification and conversion of the city zones, and so on.
But neither of them seems to be doing their work. As a result, in the construction boom of the last decade or so, while the builders have made their pile by bribing the officials and the officials have made their pile by accepting the bribe, the flat owners have been the main losers. With violation of building rules with utter impunity, they have got much less than what they paid for in terms of floor space, and facilities.
In this violation indulgence some of the builders obtain permission from the Corporation for construction of two-storied structures, and then add more stories to them. In the absence of any inspection by the Corporation and the CMDA, this has been going on unabated.
It was probably as a result of the collapse, a few years ago, of a new multi-storied structure so built, that both the authorities began to pay some attention to the hectic construction activities in the city. But even here, the owners have been the losers.
As per the recent regulations, the owners have to regularize the building violations, or face demolition! But all that is meant by regularization is that the owners pay a heavy penalty to the CMDA for the violations by the builders, and get a regularization certification. There cannot be a more anti-people, anti-development, and ridiculous decision than this.
In fact, as the builders have their liaison men in the registration department (probably the most corrupt!), Corporation, CMDA, etc., they have been able to bend and break rules. As most flat buyers are ignorant of building regulations and invest in good faith, rather than facing demolition and going to the court, which grinds like the god’s mill, they prefer to regularise the violations by paying the penalty even if they have to borrow for doing so, though by any stretch of imagination the builders should not only pay the penalty to the CMDA but also compensate the flat buyers for violations and deficiency in service.
I have been familiar with the details of the misdeeds of the authorities and the builders for various reasons. These include the following.
Ever since I moved into a new flat (one out of the 18), I was the Secretary of the Apartments Owners Welfare Association of the building complex, of which my flat is one, for more than six years, till December 30, 2001.
The President of the Association and myself ensured that the Association was registered under the Societies Act of the State.
As the flat owners began to interact, we discovered a number of violations in the construction, and failure of the builder to adhere to the norms laid down by the statutory bodies as committed by him in the Construction Agreements.
Following this, I wrote to the Corporation for the Plan Permit, and the reply was if the building has more than two stories, I should approach the CMDA.
When I took up the matter with the CMDA I did not get any reply. When I took up the matter again, with its Member-Secretary (a senior IAS Officer) directly, through a personal letter and when he knew my identity, his response was prompt.
He sent a team for inspecting the premises (two years or so, after construction!), and after inspection, the CMDA issued a printed notice to the builder (a notice usually issued before starting the construction or at the construction stage), with copy to me.
As the builder has money and muscle power, we faced a lot of problems in dealing with him. When we gave him an ultimatum to honour his commitments, he abruptly withdrew the maintenance of the entire complex (for which we were paying every month).
Not to be outdone, we took over the maintenance ourselves (in 1994 or so), and still continue with it.
On receipt of the copy of the CMDA notice, which established the illegality of the construction (the Corporation’s Permit was only for 12 flats, in three blocks with four flats in each, whereas the builder built another six flats, adding a third storey to each block, obviously at our cost, which reduced the floor-space index considerably), we filed a petition against the builder in the State Consumer Redress Forum (that it is still pending before the Forum, after about four years of its filing speaks volumes about the State’s consumer grievance redress mechanisms is a different issue).
Meanwhile, as part of its attempts to enrich the State’s ex-chequer, the CMDA issued demolition notices to several flat owners.
Following this, I took the initiative of getting the demolition of our complex stayed, and the Madras High Court gave an absolute stay in response to the writ petition filed on behalf of 12 flat owners.
From the above rather uninteresting narration, one might ask if the CMDA was constituted for development or destruction of the city. Going by what the CMDA has been doing, the appellation development in the name of this sleazy establishment is an affront to the State, to the people of Chennai, and to the word development in the lexicon.