TLI Staff
Noida: Various courts across the country have slammed and pulled up civic authorities for encroachment of public land, illegal construction and violation of building laws but New Okhla Industrial Development Authority (NOIDA) seems to have taken no lesson.
The civic agency which controls and manages Noida, part of national capital region (NCR), has remained nearly indifferent to building rule violations and flouting of lease terms by hundreds of housing societies.
Being a new and planned city, Noida could have set a benchmark for other cities but sadly it has become the same or worse when compared to towns like Indore and Bhopal. The township of Noida was built in 1976, much later than the city of Chandigarh but unfortunately the former has turned out to be a typical tier-II Indian town characterised by traffic snarls, mass building law violations and lack of planning.
Many of the housing societies in Noida which had once been constructed to offer ideal livable conditions to the citizens now look like haphazardly erected buildings. Societies like Rail Vihar in Sector 33, Aravali and Udaygiri in Sector 34 are some of the eye sores. The Noida authority could have stopped it well in time but has failed. It has failed the city-dwellers.
The main reason behind illegal construction is deep corruption in civic agencies. A Supreme Court-appointed monitoring committee had in a 2017 report blamed corrupt officials of local bodies for illegal construction in Delhi. The civic body of Noida can be no different from others. With poor record of governance in the state, Noida administration could certainly not be different.
Senior bureaucrats appointed as Chairman and CEOs are the biggest culprit for the sorry state of the city. Failed as administrators they must be taken to task. But punishing IAS officers for dereliction of their duties is virtually impossible in India. The officers continue to enjoy power and privilege once availed by the British agents working as revenue officers.
They are trained perhaps to give a damn to citizens’ concerns and owe allegiance to the Sarkar.
The current Noida officials are no different from their predecessors given that there is barely any visible change or even a semblance of that. They are continuing the old British practice of enforcing the law differently for the common citizen and in a totally different way for the elite comprising the moneyed class, those yielding state authority and politicians.
One of the localities where state bureaucrats and powerful people live is Sector 15A. There is hardly any encroachment of any common area there with all civic facilities provided 24*7. But there are other sectors nearby which is in stark contrast and look totally messy. The primary reason for this is double standard in law enforcement.
IAS officer Ritu Maheshwari is the current chief executive of Noida authority. Given the state authority she yields she can make a big difference but it depends on her priorities.