NCP corporator among 9 held for building crash

Mumbai: Nine persons, including two builders and a corporator of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), arrested in connection with the crash of the seven-storey illegal building in Mumbra, were remanded to police custody till April 20 by a local court in Thane on Sunday. Thursday's collapse of the illegal building was the worst in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region � home to thousands of tottering buildings � with 74 persons having been killed. The two builders, Jamil Qureshi (who was arrested in Uttar Pradesh) and Salim Shaikh had started work on the building just four months ago. The building came up on forest land without necessary clearances from the district collector or the Thane municipal corporation. About 35 families had moved into the apartments on four floors, even as the work was proceeding on the upper floors. The lower-middle-class buyers had paid a minimum of Rs 5 lakh for the apartments in the illegal building. Hira Patil, a corporator of the ruling NCP, along with a suspended deputy municipal commissioner of the Thane civic body, besides other employees of the corporation and the building firm, and a police constable, were among those produced before the court on Sunday. Mumbra is a predominantly lower middle-class suburb and according to the Maharashtra government, 90 per cent of the buildings there are illegal. Chief minister Prithviraj Chavan claims that about 100,000 residents are staying in buildings classified as 'dangerous' and 'very dangerous.' Thousands of people are forced to buy tiny flats in Mumbai's distant suburbs (all of which are located in the neighbouring Thane district) as property prices in the metropolis are way beyond their reach. Plush apartments in south Mumbai are sold for rates upwards of Rs1 lakh a sq ft. In central and western Mumbai, the price ranges between Rs25,000 and Rs50,000, whereas further north the rates are between Rs10,000 and Rs25,000. With the state government unable to tackle the housing crisis in Mumbai � where 60 per cent of the population live in slums � or formulating a policy that would enable private builders to promote affordable housing, slumlords and criminals have taken control of 'mass housing' in the extended suburbs.