The court said that it will hear on April 4 the PIL over the building collapse, in which at least 10 people were killed and several others injured.

A division bench headed by Chief Justice T S Sivagnanam directed the state government to rehabilitate the people who have been displaced owing to the collapse of the five-storey building at Garden Reach early on Monday.

The court directed the state to provide the affected people with the necessary shelter and support them with adequate rations so that they would be able to take care of themselves.

The bench, also comprising Justice Hiranmay Bhattacharyya, directed the authorities concerned to file a report in the form of an affidavit before it on the next date of hearing as regards the remedial measures taken by the state to rehabilitate the people affected by the collapse of the building.

The court was informed by the petitioner’s lawyer that those who were killed owing to the collapse of the under-construction building were residents of shanties around it.

While hearing the matter, the court said that enforcement mechanisms to ensure compliance with rules are not available.

The chief justice said that as soon as a person with a proper building plan for constructing a house gets a lorry even half-filled with sand and one with bricks in front of his plot, two emissaries would arrive there, maintaining that the local “councillor will know” about that.

He also said that when a person without having any sanctioned plan dumps sand and bricks from three lorries in front of a plot, nobody will come as the person had volunteered himself to the emissaries.

“The nastiest part is that these people (builders) construct such houses shabbily, sell these off and go,” he said.
He said that a five-storey building could not have come up without the knowledge of the authorities.

In the aftermath of the building collapse, Kolkata mayor Firhad Hakim has said that it is not the duty of the local councillor to know which building is being legally constructed and which is not, holding that it is the responsibility of the engineers of the municipal corporation.

When the chief justice said the allegation was that it was a water body, senior advocate Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya said that there are many such water bodies which have been or are being filled up.

Bhattacharya, a former mayor of Kolkata and a CPI(M) Rajya Sabha MP at present, said that the KMC authorities were possibly not in a position to control these illegal activities.

The court was informed that a compensation of Rs 5 lakh to the next of kin of each deceased and Rs one lakh to each injured person was announced by the state government.