Kochi Corporation asks water-front buildings to produce CRZ certificates

Names of leading industrialists missing from list; action comes six years after civic body issued ultimatum warning of demolition

Six years after its unsuccessful attempt to make the builders of water-front buildings produce Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) clearance certificates, the Kochi Corporation is once again at it.

The corporation has started serving notice on the builders of 93 high-rises that have come up in its CRZ area. However, no time-frame has been fixed for producing the certificates.

It was following a report prepared by the Regional Town Planning Office, Ernakulam, on the CRZ violations in Kochi in the post-Maradu scenario that the local body decided to serve the notices. The list, accessed by

The Hindu, comes with the Google Earth image of the site and the building. The names and the pictures of the buildings, the nature of occupancy, the number of floors, the nature of the nearby water body and the access route to the structure are listed. The approximate distance of the building from the water body has also been provided. The corporation plans to verify the approval of the Kerala Coastal Zone Management Authority for these buildings, sources said.

Incidentally, the Chief Secretary had submitted an affidavit in the Supreme Court in the Maradu apartment case that the State would track all the CRZ violations. Similar lists have been prepared in all the 10 coastal districts of the State.

The list includes one building of a hospital complex in Edappally, located 10 metres from a canal, a convention centre at Kaloor, which is 20 metres from a water body, and a five-star hotel near Vyttila. Interestingly, the residential units of Coast Guard, BSNL and Cochin Shipyard, and commercial complexes and malls that have come up on Shanmugham Road have also found a place on the list.

At the same time, a senior official of the Local Self Government Department questioned the exercise of the Kochi Corporation. The coastal local bodies should issue building permits only after the project proponent producing the NOC from the KCZMA and other agencies. The local bodies should check its dossiers for the clearance letters before asking the builders to produce the NOCs, he said.

Though the authorities had identified 34 such suspected buildings in Vyttila zone alone in the new list, the names of some leading industrialists and influential persons and builders who carried out constructions on the banks of Chilavannoor Lake are missing. Various agencies, including the Comptroller and Auditor General of India had flagged the violations along the lake.

The corporation had issued an ultimatum to 19 builders on November 22, 2014, stating that their buildings would be demolished and the permits revoked if they failed to produce the NOC from the KCZMA within 15 days. However, the builders chose to ignore it. Interestingly, it was after one year of serving notice on the builders that the civic body issued the ultimatum.