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Gulshan Highrise

No respect for HC stay?

North city corporation, developer go ahead flouting rules

Tawfique Ali
Brazenly defying a High Court stay order, Dhaka North City Corporation and a realestate developer are going ahead with the construction of a highrise near Gulshan-2 without environment or height clearances.
Work on the building's interior is on and a basement is being used commercially.
Dhaka City Corporation, before it was split in two, had dubiously approved the 26-story Gulshan Centre Point even though only an authorised officer of Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripakkha (Rajuk) could approve a building that was within the master plan of the capital.
Dhaka City Corporation approved the highrise without the mandatory clearance of the Department of Environment and height clearance from the Civil Aviation Authority, Bangladesh.
The corporation reached a property sharing deal with the real estate developer United Group, giving the latter 75 percent of the built-up property along with the ownership of proportionate land.
The land, however, belongs to Rajuk and is earmarked in the master plan of Dhaka as public facilities.
ATM Shamsul Huda, former chief election commissioner, whose home is near the proposed highrise, and Bangladesh Environment Lawyers Association (Bela) had filed a petition with the High Court challenging the legality of the building following a news report carried by this paper last December.
The court in March stayed the construction work of the building.
The building was up to the 11th floor by the time the court ordered the stay, said Huda, adding that the builder then hurriedly added three more floors.
"Moreover, the developer made frantic attempts to make the building ready for commercial use and in early July opened up one of its basements for a massive departmental store named Unimart," he said.
Construction workers and security personnel there told The Daily Star recently that the building had been constructed up to the 15th floor and that work on the interior was going on day and night.
Abul Kalam Azad, vice-chairman of United Group, said the firm had halted vertical construction on the 15 th floor after getting the court order. "We are now going on with the internal construction work,” he said, adding that the court did not bar them from using the building for commercial use.
However, Syeda Rizwana Hasan, chief executive of Bela, said the developer had no legal right to open the building for commercial use as the court had stopped the very construction of the building.
Shahdeen Malik, counsel for Huda, said neither Dhaka North City Corporation nor the developer had explained to the court that the building was legal.
"It is a sad state of affairs that people with money and muscle power are increasingly defying court orders, including those passed by the Supreme Court," he said.
Akhter Hussain Bhuiya, administrator for Dhaka North City Corporation, said, "Why does the court not launch a contempt charge against those who ignored the stay order?"
As to why an opening of the building for commercial occupancy despite the High Court stay was allowed, Akhter said, "I will look into how it happened."
Sheikh Abdul Mannan, a member of the Rajuk board, in July had said Rajuk would submit to the High Court that the building was being built illegally without Rajuk approval.
When asked in early September what action Rajuk had taken, Mannan said he was unaware. "The complainant should file a contempt charge against those who defied the High Court stay order," he added.
Public works secretary Khondaker Showkat Hossain said he learnt about the matter from The Daily Star correspondent even though his ministry was supposed to take action and stop the construction.
He said, "It has been an illegal and contemptuous act on part of the developer and the DNCC (Dhaka North City Corporation] to go ahead with the construction defying the High Court order."
Documents, some decades old, show that the then Dhaka Improvement Trust in 1981 had decided to allocate the land for an office building of the then Gulshan municipality. Neither did the municipality pay any money for the land nor did Rajuk hand it over.
Former chief election commissioner Huda said the construction work of the building had begun some seven years ago but remained suspended during the last army-backed caretaker government.