Demolition Notification: Fill & Download for Free

I do not think China has any dark secrets, it is all about money, or maybe I should call it: efficient utilization of resources.And I think what China does is just OK. It becomes faster only when you are comparing it with some other countries.Some people mentioned that the Chinese government could do anything it wants without any regard for red tape, democracy, safety, environment, or blah, blah, blah, that is just wrong.When infrastructure is going to be built on government-owned lands, you will see notifications outside the rounded land, and that is it.When infrastructure is going to be built on private lands, there will be demolition notification or requisition notification shown to the public, telling people when the demolition/requisition will start/finish.The notification is always published months before the demolition or requisition. In this period of time, the government is open to take the public opinion, and if 20% of the people in the area do not want this demolition or requisition, the government has to drop it.People could also negotiate with the government for better compensations or that kind of stuff.I know this because my father worked on the construction committee (a government department) before he retired, and the committee publishes those notifications.

Here is the apartment H2O Holy Faith, next to the edge of a lake, the Vembanad Lake in Kochi, Kerala in India.On Saturday at 11.18 am, the building was brought down.It was not alone.Three other apartments also shared its fate.Alfa Serene, on the very same day.The next day, another apartment, the Jain Coral CoveAgain, on that same day, Golden Kayaloram, the smallest of the lot.Why were these buildings demolished?It was because they were built on Maradu, a municipality lying in a Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ).Maradu had upgraded to a municipality from a panchayat (village council) in 2010. In September 2006, the panchayat offered permits to four companies to construct five apartment complexes.This was done without informing the Kerala State Coastal Zone Management Authority (KSCZMA).Nine months after issuing the permission, the Maradu gram panchayat, following a directive from the KSCZMA, issued notices to these builders alleging violation of CRZ norms.Coastal Regulation Zones are classified into 4 - CRZ-I, CRZ-II, CRZ-III and CRZ-IV. Depending on the zone type, certain activities are limited. For example, in a CRZ-III area, no construction is allowed within 200 metres from the coast. In a CRZ-II zone, works are allowed beyond 50 metres from the coast.In Maradu’s case, it was lying in a CRZ-III zone, and those buildings were lying awfully close.The builders were not happy. They approached the Kerala High Court in 2007, and obtained a stay order.KSCZMA, however, didn’t give up. They went to the Supreme Court, and argued that Maradu offered the permits without their concurrence, and since the CRZ areas in the state were managed by them, it was well within their authority to withdraw the permits.Maradu panchayat, argued that it is a CRZ-II zone, that was mistakenly categorized as a CRZ-III. Hence, the CRZ norms were not broken, and the constructions were not illegal.Last year, the Supreme Court created a technical committee to verify these claims.Their findings?The Coastal Zone Management Plan was approved in Kerala in 1996. Maradu was classified as a CRZ-III zone, since it was a rural area. As per a new notification in 2011, Maradu was to be categorized as a CRZ-II zone. However, it was not approved by the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change so far.Maradu, hence, remains a CRZ-III zone.On May 8, 2019, the Supreme Court issued an order to raze the buildings.It came as a rude shock to the building residents. Several political parties and organisations rallied behind the residents and staged protest marches. The Supreme Court refused to entertain another batch of review petitions filed by the residents and ordered the State government to execute the order.The Kerala government dilly-dallied on the implementation of the court order. Finding that the government did not comply with this order, the Supreme Court issued an ultimatum.The buildings must be demolished by September 20, 2019.For the 400+ families residing in these apartments, it was a death knell for them.Though the demolition was prolonged due to the state government and the Maradu Municipality trying to place the ball in the other’s court over the costs, it eventually happened in the previous week.Those apartments, razed to the ground.That lush, green landscape covered with a sheet of dust.Some of the debris fell into the ecologically sensitive waters, and into the surrounding areas, which house many other families.Humongous quantities of steel, cement and other building materials were wasted, not to mention hours of human effort.And the biggest loss was for none other than the apartment owners, where a majority of them used their savings to buy these apartments. All of it gone.In just a few seconds.With all of these consequences that arose (and are yet to come) due to the demolition order, did the Supreme Court do the right thing?If you take one perspective, then the order was necessary.Kerala has been reeling from continuous floods, and the most devastating one happened in 2018. One of the reasons behind these floods is due to the rise of illegal constructions.Such an order, would probably prevent more illegal constructions from happening.However, from another perspective, we have people getting punished for buying an apartment, instead of the builders, and the officials who had received bribes.Instead of proper regulation, and placing timely management on checks of illegal construction activities, the government decided to take the easy way out.By demolishing these apartments.How long will they continue to keep placing band-aids to cover-up the underlying causes?We will have to wait and see.

Well before I start, let me just note that it is horrible when people’s homes are destroyed. Above is a picture of my next door neighbor’s house (I live in an area inside the Green line on land that was purchased by Jews in the 1870s) after Israel ordered him to bulldoze it. (The state ordered this demolition for some of the same reasons the homes in East Jerusalem are being bulldozed - he built it without a permit because it’s a long, complicated and expensive process to get one.)It was gut-wrenching to watch. So I wish the owners and the state could have come to an agreement whereby the demolitions, or at least most of them, could have been avoided. (Which apparently the state tried to do and the Palestinian Authority incentivized the owners not to agree to, for nationalistic reasons, by promising them compensation[1]).But yes, I do agree with it. Here’s a map of the area in question from a current article showing the location of the houses.Source Dangerous precedent: East Jerusalem neighbourhood faces mass house demolitionsHere’s a map from 2008 that I have from an old B’tzelem pamphlet.And here’s a zoom in on those two maps plus B’tzelm’s new map of the area, on the far rightAs you can see from the above, the construction is new, and it is right along the barrier. The old B’tselem map (from before this became an issue) also shows the whole area as Area B. Only their new map shows most of it as Area A. So either B’tselem was wrong previously, or they decided to relabel this part of the map as ‘A’ when this became an issue to up the political ante.But, leaving the exact division of authority aside, why would the IDF even put the barrier there in the first place? This village was actively hostile during the intifada[2][3] so why not just build the barrier to leave it out. Or at least why not build it so that only Area C (where Israel has not only full security control, but also full administrative control, per the Oslo accords) is included on the Israeli side, and just avoid any complications.)As it happens, that’s exactly what Israel planned to do - leave it on the other side of the barrier. But the residents came before the Supreme Court and pleaded to be included on the Israeli side. The court granted their wish - see 9156/03 Jabur v. Director of the Seam Line (30 December 2003).Later Israel tried to exclude the residents of this neighborhood from being part of Israeli national insurance and health funds on the grounds that they didn’t live in Israel ( which they did not.) So the residents went to court and pleaded to be included in these programs. The Attorney General granted their wish.[4]Then some of the residents of this neighborhood came before the court and pleaded to have their children from their second wives granted the status of permanent residents (even though these children lived in the area of the village outside Israel with the second wives and bigamy is illegal in Israel) so that they could receive social benefits. The court and the interior ministry eventually granted their wish (while noting that under the laws of Israel bigamy is a criminal offence, but that it would overlook this for the good of the children.)[5][6] [7]Then, when they started building the buildings (which was after the IDF had issued an administrative order prohibiting building within 400 meters of the barrier in 2011 ) and the IDF issued demolition orders for them, they came before the court and requested a stay of the demolition orders. And again the court granted their wish. But, at this point it also ordered them to cease work on the buildings until the issue could be worked out becauseaccording to the data provided, in 2016 there were more than 170 security incidents near the security fence in the area under discussion, including the infiltration of terrorists who committed acts of terror in the territory of the state. It was also noted that during the period 2015-2017, hundreds of exceptional security incidents and thousands of illegal aliens' events occurred in this area (entrance or attempt to enter illegal aliens).[8]However, the owners of the buildings ignored not only the IDF’s order but also the Supreme Court’s order to cease work until a solution could be worked out. In its final decision allowing the demolition to proceed, the court statedthe Petitioners made a law for themselves, when they began and continued building the buildings that were the subject of the petitions without receiving a special permit from the military commander in accordance with the order prohibiting construction, while ignoring the order. The construction of the case in HCJ 3/17, which was built within the scope of the sequestration order, as well as the structures mentioned above, which continued with construction activities even after the notification was delivered, and the issuance of orders from this court, which ordered the construction freeze, are especially grave . The trial is a case of severe dishonesty, which in itself may justify rejecting the petitions out of hand[9] -To sum up:When they came before the court this final time it effectively said ‘we’ve had it with you - your hands are not clean.’ You can’t petition to be made part of the area run by Israel, petition the authorities to get benefits provided by the state such as health care, social security, and permanent residency for children from marriages which are criminal under Israeli law and be granted all these things, and then ignore the orders of Israel’s courts and its army when it suits you.The Court also notedthat per the terms of the Oslo accords responsibility for overall security for Israelis and for preventing terror remains in the hands of the military commander of the territories, even in Areas A and B.that therefore the decision of the military commander overrides the decisions of the Palestinian civil authorities in matters relating to security because the PA’s authority over zoning does not derogate from the IDF’s responsibility for security.that the Palestinian Authority was aware of the ban on building in this area, and that no permits from the Palestinian Authority for these buildings were presented to the courtthat due to the acts of terror perpetrated by terrorists who used this area to get into Israel (because the crowded construction blocked the view and facilitated infiltration), the decision to demolish these buildings for security reasons was justified.Here’s the whole decision (which the latest appeal upheld) as a doc:https://supremedecisions.court.gov.il/Home/Download?path=HebrewVerdicts\17\460\032\b22&fileName=17032460.B22&type=4Here’s a link to it as html (so that you can translate it easily by right-clicking and selecting ‘Translate to English”https://supremedecisions.court.gov.il/Home/Download?path=HebrewVerdicts\17\460\032\b22&fileName=17032460.B22&type=2And here is a link to the Oslo Accords for anyone who wants to verify for themselves that responsibility for the security of Israelis and for preventing terror remained in Israel’s hand’s even in areas A and B - https://web.archive.org/web/20021115180646/http://knesset.gov.il/process/docs/heskemb_eng.htmFootnotes[1] PA Prevented Compromise between Israel and Arab Residents on Illegal Jerusalem Construction[2] https://mfa.gov.il/mfa/foreignpolicy/terrorism/palestinian/pages/victims%20of%20palestinian%20violence%20and%20terrorism%20sinc.aspx[3] Christianity Uncovered[4] Social benefits for Palestinians in Sur Baher, Hadoar[5] https://supremedecisions.court.gov.il/Home/Download?fileName=09019660.n12&path=HebrewVerdicts%5C09/660/019/n12&type=4[6] After a lengthy battle: children from the Wadi Hummus neighborhood will receive status outside the temporary order[7] Social benefits for Palestinians in Sur Baher, Hadoar[8] https://supremedecisions.court.gov.il/Home/Download?path=HebrewVerdicts\17\460\032\b22&fileName=17032460.B22&type=4[9] https://supremedecisions.court.gov.il/Home/Download?path=HebrewVerdicts\17\460\032\b22&fileName=17032460.B22&type=4