Officials said, the civic body sends recovery notice demanding a huge fine from the offenders once the illegal structures are demolished.
However, in this case the recovery won’t be possible as the owners of these illegal structures, from where the illicit liquor trade were being operated, had demolished the structures by themselves.
“Like in any other normal case, if we would have demolished this structure our accounts team would calculated the fine amount based on several factors. The money would have recovered in lieu of expenses incurred on demolishing the buildings. But, in this case, since the owners had demolished the structures of their own, we have no more roles to play,” Raghuveer Saini, the chief of JDA’s enforcement wing, told TOI.
Officials said, the cost is being calculated on factors like how many JCBs had been used, number of police personnels of different ranks deployed, number of JDA officials and outsourced labourers present during the demolition drive.
“The state police department has its fixed rates depending on the designation for deployment of police personnel in such cases. In addition, JDA also calculates the cost they had to incur on taking the JCBs on rent and cost on labourers outsourced from private firms. In addition, there are several miscellaneous expenses as well,” a senior JDA official explained.
The fine amount may range anything between Rs 5 lakhs to Rs 25 lakhs or even more. For example, during the recent crackdown on coaching centres, JDA imposed fines of Rs Rs 9,23,000 for demolishing the Adhigam Coaching Institute, Rs 19,00,000 for demolishing the residence of Bhupendra Saran – the prime accused of the paper leak case and another Rs 10,00,000 for demolishing the commercial building next to the Adhigam Coaching Centre.
“It seems that people involved in the illicit liquor case know the rulebook. They had demolished the four buildings themselves to bypass the penalty. However, police can continue criminal cases against the accused,” another JDA official added.
