Demolition process to begin from today
TEAM HERALD
teamherald@herald-goa.com
PANJIM: Government has decided to demolish three buildings, adjacent to the collapsed part of Ruby Residency as they have developed cracks and have tilted, Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar said Tuesday. The demolition process will begin from Wednesday, he said adding that machinery required to demolish the building has been requisitioned from Pune.
Parrikar said all the authorities and experts from the field of construction and disaster management have certified that there is no possibility of any more survivors being alive in the debris.
“In next three to four days all the three buildings and the small structures nearby would be demolished… it has been observed that the design of the buildings was faulty and the material used was poor and substandard,” he said.
Chief Minister said that the manual rescue operation has commenced since Tuesday morning as use of heavy machinery would further damage the adjacent buildings thereby risking lives of people, staying nearby.
The deceased are from Jharkhand, Karnataka, Orissa, Goa, Kerala and Nepal.
Chief Minister also announced that the case is heading towards a scenario where the culprits could be booked under section 302 (murder) of IPC. Police have registered an FIR under various sections of IPC against the builder, contractor, civil engineer, deputy town planner and others. TCP official Prakash Bandodkar, currently under suspension, has been already arrested.
Giving a clean chit to the then Congress government and his own under fire Sports Minister, Parrikar said that prima facie there does not seem to be any political pressure or intervention in granting permission to Bharat Developers from Mumbai, whose building collapsed on January 4 in Canacona, killing nearly 19 people and injuring over 22.
Parrikar said that it was a clear cut conspiracy between the deputy town planner Prakash Bandodkar, builder and the contractor. “There is corruption, manipulation and criminal conspiracy at the bureaucratic level and not at political level…prima facie there seems to be no political angle to the entire conspiracy,” he said.
The Congress party had alleged that some of the permissions were granted during the BJP-led government tenure, a charge refuted by Parrikar, who said that the permissions for all the three phases were given in 2010 ~ May 28, 2010 (phase I), June 3, 2010 (phase II) and June 16, 2010 (phase III). However, he confirmed that the completion and occupancy certificate to the buildings were granted in February and September 2013 respectively.
“These certificates were granted without completion of work…Congress and its leaders are trying to politicize the issue when the fact is that entire permissions were given when Congress were in power,” Chief Minister said. “But, going through the papers I don’t see any political linkups in the case…it’s a clear cut corruption case at the deputy town planner level,” he added.
Parrikar, who is also Minister for Town and Country Planning, said ‘the incident is an eye opener…the deputy town planner and the civil engineer has probably taken money…this is not an administrative failure but human failure’.
