Maradu flats demolition: H20 residents still await fair compensation
December is the follow-up month at TNM where we go back to headlines of the past for a status update. In this series, we strive to bring focus back to promises made by governments, revisit official investigations that should have been completed by now and exhume issues of public interest that lost steam over time.
On January 11 and 12, 2020, people across Kerala and beyond stayed glued to their screens to watch four waterfront apartment complexes in Kochi’s Maradu go up in dust. Almost three years have passed but residents of one of the demolished flats are yet to receive any compensation beyond the interim payment made by the Kerala government.
The demolition was the culmination of a legal battle that ended with a Supreme Court bench including Justice Arun Mishra ordering the demolition of the flats that were found to be built in violation of the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) rules. While public interest died out after the initial curiosity that the implosion of the buildings generated, getting compensation hasn’t been an easy task for families who had built their homes in the four flats.
The Kerala government paid Rs 25 lakh in interim compensation to all flat owners who possessed valid documentation immediately following the demolition. The builders were ordered to deposit a total compensation amount and demolition expenses incurred with the state government. Earlier in September 2019, the court had appointed a judicial commission to fix compensation for the evictees. It was decided that evicted flat owners would be paid the amount for which they had originally bought the flat, minus the land value. However, several persons had bought flats with undocumented money, making them ineligible for the receiving the total amount they had spent.
Mohan, a USA-based non-resident Indian who owned five flats in H2O, says that the only amount he has received in compensation is Rs 25 lakh from the state government. He was compensated for only one of the five units he had bought in 2006. The understanding then was that they would get the remaining compensation amount sooner or later. “I bought five flats for about Rs 3.2 crore. The expectation was that we would get not the actual market value of the property in 2020, but at least the amount we paid for it when we bought it,” he said.
“In my position, I could afford to take a body blow, but the same cannot be said about several others who lost their homes. Land and property value have appreciated in Kochi and the five flats collectively would be currently worth at least Rs 13 crore,” he added.
A committee was constituted under Justice Balachandran Nair to oversee the distribution of the compensation amount that the flat owners were eligible for. A year after the demolitions, in January 2021, the committee informed the Supreme Court that only two of the four builders - Golden Kayaloram and Jain Coral Cove - had deposited the amount. By November 2021, the committee had recovered the compensation from the builders of Alfa Serene also.
CM Varghese, a former resident of Golden Kayaloram, said that he had bought the flat back in 2007. The compensation amount he received more than a decade later did not include the interest that the amount would have accumulated over the years. “Compensation should be for the loss we faced. Merely paying us the amount we paid several years back without paying interest or taking into account the increase in land value is not adequate compensation. One should be able to buy/build an equivalent house. We have approached the Supreme Court with a review petition. The matter is currently at court,” he said. He called their eviction and the demolitions a violation of natural justice.
The fourth builder, H2O Holy Faith, is yet to deposit the amount. For former residents of H2O, no relief beyond the interim Rs 25 lakh has come their way since the demolition. Isaac K Pattaniparambil, whose son-in-law had a flat in H2O, says that several persons who can afford to not be compensated are beginning to write it off as a lost cause. He and Advocate Antony, former H2O resident, both accused the builder Sany Francis of committing several frauds since the beginning of construction. He is now refusing to pay the compensation also.
Sany Francis, the builder behind H2O Holy Faith told TNM that he hasn’t paid the amount because he doesn't have the means to as all his assets have been frozen by the Supreme Court. “The deputy district collector had issued notice to liquidate my frozen assets and auction them off in April this year. However, they failed to follow the rules prescribed in Revenue Recovery Act and gave only a seven days’ notice. The matter is pending before the Supreme Court now and is expected to come up for hearing next week,” he said. Even while claiming that he is barely surviving as all his assets have been freezed, Sany added that whether he has to even pay the flat owners is another matter that needs to be considered. “The government and the municipality authorities are culpable in this matter as they are the ones who sanctioned the building,” he said.