It’s a tell tale example of institutional apathy.
A town developing authority that boasts about its “custodian” role in urban management, not only failed to protect its mandated city from losing its prime wetland ecology but also took an agonizingly long time to mend its mistakes.
Twenty years after the High Court first declared development of a housing project on Dhaka’s critically important flood flow zone as illegal, the Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripakkha (Rajuk) finally moved to ask over 3,000 plot owners of Modhumoti Model Town to leave the place removing all structures on over 550-acres of land and restore the same to its original wetland condition.
Through a public announcement last week, Rajuk directed plot owners in Modhumoti Model Town, at Aminbazar, to remove all structures from the area, remove sands used to fill the land, as it was part of a wetland, and instructed owners to restore the site to its original condition.
Non-compliance would see Rajuk itself starting an eviction drive demolishing the structures and reverting the site to its prior state, warned the capital’s development authority.
Interestingly, it fell short of giving any deadline, keeping it open on the decision of the plot owners.
And the Rajuk eviction notice came hard on the heel of a plot owners press conference held in the city on December 26 where, they claimed of buying the plots after seeing developer company’s newspaper advertisements back in 2001. They said why should thousands of families who have invested their life’s savings on this housing find them at the receiving end of such distress.
Rajuk’s failure to go by the books
Modhumoti Model Town — the first project of a private housing development company called – Metro Makers & Developers Ltd. was established in 1990. Metro Makers started buying the lands from 1991 and went on sale in the year 2001.
But the housing project, developed on 550 acres of wetlands, were identified as floodplains in the 1997 Dhaka City Master Plan.
Interestingly, Rajuk, an institution that take pride in its vouched role as custodian of Dhaka’s urban development and management, didn’t take any serious move, other than serving a few cautionary notices to Metro Makers,in saving the floodplains.
It took a rights body to blow the whistle against such peril.
Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers Association (Bela) filed a writ petition in mid-August, 2004, challenging the legality of the Metro Makers’ project.
Subsequently, a division bench of the High Court issued injunction for six months against Metro Makers preventing it from further earth filling or undertaking any other activity for implementing the project including advertisements to sell plots in Modhumoti Model Town.
The court also issued rule asking the government agencies to show cause as to why they should not be directed to protect the sub-flood flow zone being filled up by Modhumoti and also why the said project of Modhumoti having no authorization from Rajuk and being violative of applicable laws shall not be declared unlawful.
The Bela case was disposed of on 27 July, 2005 and the rule was made absolute in part. On the issue of legality of the project the court categorically held that the project of Modhumoti Model Town being undertaken in violation of the Town Improvement Act and the Master Plan prepared thereunder, the Environment Conservation Act and the Act No. 36 of 2000 and without having obtained any permission from Rajuk, the same is unauthorized, illegal, without lawful authority and against public interest.
The court directed Rajuk to protect the sub flood flow zone of Savar Amin Bazar from illegal earth filling by the Metro makers and also directed Metro makers to refrain from undertaking any further earth filling in the said sub–flood flow zone.
The court, however, directed that since people have already purchased plots, the third party interest of the buyers shall not be affected by this order.
Both Bela and Metro Makers preferred appeals against the judgment of the high Court. Some buyers also preferred appeals. Bela pleaded that third party right cannot be recognized in a project that is declared illegal.
On the other hand, Metro Makers and their identified buyers preferred appeals pleading legality of the Modhumoti Model Town project and recognition of purchaser’s right.
In August, 2012, the full bench of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court disposed of all the appeals by a single order. The court allowed Bela’s appeal and dismissed all the other appeals of Metro Makers and the plot buyers.
In 2019, the Supreme Court ordered the project owner to restore the wetland, dismantle the construction, and refund plot buyers double the amount they paid, including registration fees.
Consequence of Rajuk’s inactions
Even after High Court and Supreme Court’s verdicts on this, what took Rajuk so long to come up with its directive on evicting the unauthorized structures at its demarcated wetland remains a mystery to many city dwellers.
But taking advantage of such foot-dragging, there were numerous powerful moves and pressures from high-ups, even from the housing ministry, on Rajuk to convert the status of the Savar-Aminbazar flood flow zone and freeing the area from urban development restriction.
And, all the while when cases were being settled in the courts and Rajuk taking an apparent long nap, people who bought the plots at Modhumoti continued investing heavily on constructing luxurious buildings and even over a dozen resorts, restaurants, swimming pools, playfields etc with the hope that government wouldn’t go after them any further.
Now, Rajuk’s open-ended notice, without any deadline, asking plot owners to demolish structures and restore the whole area to its old shape seems full of impracticality.
“A Residential Town is not always a blessing for a country. Modhumoti Model Town is a similar type of project which creates high facilities for a living, but in a broader sense it destroyed the whole ecological system. Overall environmental assessments indicate that the area has lost its character. A live free-flowing water channel is completely destroyed and that forces to make the river dead,” reads a recent study carried with technical supports from the Center for Environmental and Geographic Information Services (CEGIS).
It states: “Even in recent years, the model town has grown in full form. A complete community is living in the town with continuous urbanizing of the site. Hence it is completely understandable that imposing law to an illegal development project is not enough yet.”
Netizens also took to social media handles in giving opinions on the authorities’ inactions.
A netizen wonders how come plot owners managed getting electricity connections had the whole housing was illegal.
Another wrote: “When Metro Makers sold these plots, were the authorities asleep? These sales were widely advertised on national TV, radio, and through billboards across major roads. The Modhumoti project was promoted extensively, leaving no doubt about its legitimacy.”