Residents of Santacruz gaothan building up for demolition allege injustice

MUMBAI:

Since Monday, the residents of DSouza Mansion in Santacruz East have been living without electricity and water, waiting it out in the little courtyard of their building. A generator has allowed them to run one fan in each of the 10 homes at night, while the children have been studying for exams with torches and candles. They fear an even worse fate; that within a few days, their building on their ancestral land will be demolished, and they will no longer have a place to call home.

“The BMC and police barged in around noon on Monday to cut off our electricity supply,” said 81-year-old Mary Fernandez tearfully. “How do we live in such heat and amid mosquitos? They should just kill us.”

Another resident, Gracy D’Souza, 78, had bruises on her arm which, she claimed, were acquired when she stopped the police from cutting off their water supply. Two more elderly residents in the ground-plus-two-storey building are bedridden.

On March 11, the BMC served the residents a notice to evacuate, as their building had been categorised as C-1 or dilapidated and to be demolished. The civic body had served them with a Section 354 (demolition) notice on February 5. But, as in the case of many other buildings pasted with a C-1 notice, the residents claim otherwise. “We carried out structural audits at least thrice, the latest in 2023, all of which rated our building as C2B or repairable,” said Dennis D’Souza, an East Indian Catholic whose ancestors owned the plot. “What is extraordinary is that the BMC first structural audit done in 2014—which categorised our building as C1—and our own audit which classified it as C2B, were signed by the same person, although through two different companies.”

In the early 2000s, D’Souza’s father was in talks for redevelopment with a builder. “This land and building is our ancestral gaothan property, and the majority of us living here are family,” he said. “This builder took advantage of our illiteracy and entered his name on our property card. Later, he gifted it to his uncle, and in 2014, the uncle sold it to Pure Value Infra Venture.”

It was then that the BMC’s first demolition report landed at the building’s doorstep. The residents’ electricity was cut then too, but they got it restarted while they contested the audit report with the BMC and in the high court. Alongside, they filed a case of forgery against the first builder.

“The court asked the BMC’s technical advisory committee (TAC) to conduct another structural audit report in 2017,” said D’Souza. “But they took till 2023 to come here, and through RTIs we found out that they had again rated our building as C1. In 2023, we redid our structural audit, as we’ve been repairing our building, and once again we have been categorised as C2B. The forgery case, meanwhile, has been moving at snail’s pace, with the builder mostly not showing up in court and being fined for it.”

D’Souza said the latest sequence of events started after Pure Value Infra Venture, which now has its name on the property card, approached the HC to get the BMC to demolish the building. The decade-old demolition process was then restarted.“Additionally, the builder has shown the building as vacant, while there are 10 flats and five shops, belonging to people who have lived here for decades. The homes are in the name of their dead ancestors,” said a troubled D’Souza.

With help from Rajaram Patel from the Koliwada Gaothan Bachao Samiti, Dsouza prepared to again approach the court on Wednesday to prevent a demolition.

“It is doubtful whether they can stop it, but even if their building goes, they should not let their land slip away, as they will never get it back,” said Patel.

Pure Value Infra Venture’s lawyer, Sudhanva Bedekar, said his client’s stance was correct. “The builder is the landlord of the property, and the BMC has not acted on its responsibility to demolish the C1/dilapidated building.” When asked about the occupants’ structural audits opposing the C1 status, the lawyer maintained that the TAC report was final.

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