Adarsh Housing Society stares at demolition

Union environment minister Jairam Ramesh lobbed the Adarsh scam right onto the state and local government authorities in Mumbai, even as he issued the Adarsh housing society a notice to show cause as to why it should not be demolished.

Ramesh, who blamed a 'systemic failure' at the local level for the construction of the 31-storey structure, gave the Adarsh society three weeks to explain why bulldozers should not be sent in.

"It is abundantly clear that the Adarsh Society had no permission to build any structure on the land.. We don't need a CBI inquiry to tell us that the Coastal Regulatory Zone [Act] has ben violated or not," he said, a day after consulting with the environment ministry officials of the state government.

Jairam also dismissed the possibility that the building may be 'regularised' through the payment of a penalty by the owners, more or less sealing the fate of the mega-structure.

"I am against the principle of regularization. It sends a very bad signal about the law. People violate the rules, presents us with a fait accompli and asks us to regularize," he said.

Jairam seemed to be gunning for the local and state government departments in charge of clearing building plans as he pointed out that the building should not have been cleared them without an environmental certificate.

He pointed out that the building was given the green signal by the local authorities without checking whether it had any clearance. Despite this, he pointed out, the state environmental authorities had, on their own, taken notice of the huge construction in November last year and issued a notice asking how the Society was building the sky-scraper without its approval.

The Maharashtra Coastal Zone Management Authority (NCZMA), he pointed out, seem to have been pressurized not to press ahead with the investigation. "Unki bhi mazhbooriyan thi (they had their own compulsions).. we live in a democracy," he said. Ramesh, however, refused to specify who would have put pressure on the NCZMA, pointing out that any collusion between officials and Adarsh Society can only be unearthed by the ongoing CBI investigation.

On being asked the possibility of proceeding against other buildings that may have flouted coastal zone regulations in Mumbai, Ramesh said his ministry, or the state unit, do not have the powers to actively seek out such violations.

"There are reports that there are other buildings too that have come up," he accepted, adding that he will go after them after 2010 amendment to the CRZ regulations are passed by the Parliament. "[After that] we won't have to depend on the media. We will have our own machinery to detect violations," he said.

Ramesh added that the ministry is likely to go for satellite mapping of built-up coastal regions to unearth more violations. "Goa is the only place we have done it so far and we have found nearly 8,000 buildings that seem to violate the CRZ rules," he said.

The minister pointed out that the Centre is directly involved in giving clearances only if the construction is within the zone closest to the coast, called CRZ 1 area. Further in, in CRZ 2, it was the state government's environment department that had the authority to issue clearances.