The Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripakkha (RAJUK), Dhaka's development authority, has demolished the two-storey site office of the 'Dhaka Western Valley' housing project in Savar for filling farmland and water bodies and running a real estate scheme without approval. In the drive on Thursday, 17 September, in the Bangram area of Banggaon union, an electricity meter was seized and the project's signboards and dredger pipes were broken up.

A mobile court led by executive magistrate Sabuj Hasan conducted the operation under the supervision of RAJUK's urban planning wing. The authority said it acted on complaints that land designated as agricultural land and water body in the Detailed Area Plan (DAP) had been filled and a housing scheme was being run on it without permission.

According to RAJUK, the project was accused of filling farmland and low-lying land with sand and of deceiving the public by putting up misleading signboards to sell plots. In the same drive, billboards of two neighbouring schemes set up in breach of the rules, 'Lake Island' and 'South East Housing', were also removed.

RAJUK said drives will continue against housing projects that violate the private residential land development rules, the Real Estate Development and Management Act, the Environment Conservation Act and the Natural Water Body Conservation Act. It urged people not to buy or book land or plots in unapproved and illegal projects.

In the upazilas around Dhaka, paddy land and low wetlands have been filled for housing schemes for years, shrinking cultivable land and blocking monsoon drainage; the authority's enforcement of the DAP's agricultural and water-body zoning is aimed at that loss.

Taking part in the drive were RAJUK deputy town planners Nabayan Khisa and Saiful Islam, assistant town planners Tamzid Bin Rafi, Shuvo Sarkar, Shahinur Rahman and Toukir Ahmed, other officials, representatives of the rural electricity cooperative and members of law enforcement. The report is from Ittefaq's digital desk.

Source: Ittefaq