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“Legal” commerce to pre-empt “illegal” commerce?

The central premise of the Collector’s proposal for commercial development of school premises seems to be that they are anyway being illegally encroached upon. The Local Administration Minister, in answer to a question raised in the Assembly in May 1998, said that in 20 school premises in Indore private parties have built unauthorized structures and that the Collector was taking necessary action (Dainik Bhaskar, June 2, 1999). The action that the collector seems to have taken is to moot a proposal for “commercial encroachment” by the government itself! Does Indore Zila Sarkar really believe that the solution to illegal encroachments is to pre-empt them through legal commercial development?

The Collector claims that the puritanical people who are averse to commercial development in school premises do nothing about unauthorized encroachments (see Box-9). Surely, the collector has not forgotten that police powers of the state to take action against illegal encroachments are vested in him and not in his “puritanical” dissenters.

The collector also mentions that once unauthorized encroachments come up in schools the state is forced to grant them tenure rights under the state’s Patta Act (see Box-9). Surely he is not unaware that the Act applies only to residential encroachments and, even in respect of these, has provisions for granting temporary patta pending relocation (for which HUDCO is willing to fund the state slum clearance board). Surely he has not forgotten that he himself has effected several evictions earlier this year, notwithstanding the Act. Surely he can, if he desires, effect non-residential evictions since they are not protected by any law.

There are also cases of school lands having been or proposed to be allotted to colonizers and even to the state Housing Board for developing residential complexes. Surely the collector is not unaware of the master plan provisions for residential and commercial landuse. Surely he knows that land earmarked for facilities like schools is disposed off at low rates precisely because it is meant for facilities, not profitable uses. While he mentions instances of “similar” property development in Delhi, the fact is that “such initiatives” in Delhi, etc, have been on land meant for, say, bus depots, not schools. Surely the Collector, who seems to have decided to single-handedly manage the city’s landuse planning, understands that commercial development is not just about constructing shops. It also requires planning for services like water and electricity and for traffic and parking, without which new commercial development stresses existing infrastructure.