The Kolkata Municipal Corporation’s decision to move its director general of buildings out of the building department, on the same day that former mayor Firhad Hakim’s officer on special duty Kalicharan Banerjee was granted bail, has reopened a larger question: how is responsibility assigned when illegal construction ends in death?
The reported reshuffle places Ujjal Sarkar, who had served as director general of buildings, in charge of the civic body’s urban improvement or slum department. Biplab Pal has been appointed acting director general of the building department. The changes were part of a wider reallocation of senior responsibilities within the municipal corporation.
The transfer itself has not been described officially as disciplinary action. A municipal official quoted by Anandabazar said the corporation could not explain why individual officers had been moved and that the changes were routine. That statement is significant because the timing of the decision has connected it to two recent building-collapse cases and to the debate over whether the civic administration has adequately examined its own role in permitting, monitoring or acting against illegal construction.
The immediate background is the collapse of a roof at an under-construction warehouse in Taratala on 24 June, in which 17 people died, according to the report. Kalicharan Banerjee was arrested during the investigation. Banerjee had served as an officer on special duty to former Kolkata mayor Firhad Hakim, making the case politically and administratively sensitive. He was granted bail on Tuesday, the same day the municipal reshuffle was announced.
The sequence has encouraged discussion inside the civic administration about whether responsibility should extend beyond the person arrested in connection with the case. The report records the question directly: can the Kolkata Municipal Corporation distance itself from responsibility for illegal construction merely because one individual has been arrested? That question remains unresolved in the material available for this report, but it goes to the central weakness in construction enforcement: individual liability and institutional accountability are not necessarily the same thing.
The Taratala incident was not the first fatal collapse cited in the report. In March 2024, an allegedly illegal under-construction building collapsed in the Kolkata Port area, killing 13 people. Three municipal engineers were suspended after that incident, while no action was taken against the director general of buildings at the time, according to Anandabazar. The comparison has now become part of the internal discussion surrounding Sarkar’s transfer.
The two incidents are separated by location and time, but they raise a common administrative problem. Construction safety depends on a chain of decisions rather than on a single inspection or a single official. Permissions, plan scrutiny, site supervision, notices, enforcement action and follow-up all sit within an institutional system. When a building collapses, an investigation may focus on the immediate accused person or contractor. The wider question is whether the system identified the risk earlier, recorded it, communicated it and acted on it.
The supplied report does not establish that Sarkar personally approved either structure, ignored a specific notice or committed an offence. It also does not establish that the municipal building department caused either collapse. Those distinctions matter. A transfer following a fatal incident may indicate administrative concern, but it is not, by itself, proof of culpability. Nor does the arrest of a political or administrative aide establish that the civic body’s responsibilities have been discharged.
The civic body’s response after the Taratala collapse reportedly included an order from Chief Minister Shubhendu Adhikari to stop new construction work within the Kolkata Municipal Corporation area and elsewhere in the state. The report places that order after the incident and says that demands for the removal of the building director grew within the corporation from that point. Sarkar remained in his post for five months after the change of government before being transferred.
That interval is part of the significance of the current reshuffle. If the transfer is routine, as the quoted municipal official stated, its timing has nevertheless made it appear connected to a period of heightened scrutiny. If it is intended as an administrative response, the corporation has not, in the supplied material, publicly explained the standards used to decide who should be moved, what findings informed the decision or how the new arrangement will improve construction enforcement.
The reallocation also changes the chain of senior responsibility. Sarkar has been moved to the urban improvement or slum department. Pal will serve as acting director general of buildings. Vishnu Das Mondal, previously director general of mechanical services with responsibility for asphalt-related work, has additionally been assigned car-pool responsibilities. Shubhojit Dashgupta has been named director general of roads, Durjoy Sarkar has been assigned parks, and Shantanu Roy has moved from parks to civil engineering. Mridul Mondal has become executive director of markets, while Mrinalkanti Mondal has been assigned to KMC-SHARP, according to the report.
These changes show that the building department has not been treated as an isolated administrative unit. Its leadership is part of a broader civic management structure in which engineering, roads, markets, parks, slum services and other functions are distributed among senior officials. That structure can improve coordination, but it can also make accountability difficult to follow when several departments, political offices and field-level personnel are involved in a construction decision.
For residents, the central issue is not simply who holds the title of director general of buildings. It is whether the municipal system can identify unsafe or unauthorised construction before it becomes a public danger. The available report does not provide figures on the number of illegal construction complaints, inspections, demolition orders, stop-work notices or pending cases under the corporation. It therefore cannot establish whether enforcement has improved or deteriorated over time.
It does, however, document two fatal collapses: 13 deaths in Kolkata Port in March 2024 and 17 deaths at Taratala in June. It also records that engineers were suspended after the earlier collapse, while the senior building official was not removed then. The contrast has created a question about how the corporation differentiates between field-level failure, supervisory responsibility and political or administrative accountability.
That distinction is particularly important in a city where construction activity takes place across older neighbourhoods, industrial areas, informal settlements and rapidly changing urban corridors. The report does not supply a citywide assessment of construction conditions, nor does it quantify the extent of unauthorised building. Any broader claim would therefore require additional records from the municipal corporation, investigation agencies or court proceedings.
The next stage should be judged by what the corporation makes public about the reshuffle and the two collapse investigations. A credible administrative response would need to clarify whether the transfers are routine, precautionary or connected to specific findings. It would also need to show how responsibility is distributed between elected representatives, senior officers, engineers, inspectors and those undertaking construction.
For now, the reported transfer changes the face of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation’s building department but does not answer the accountability question raised by the collapses. Banerjee’s bail addresses one part of the legal process. The civic reshuffle addresses one part of the administrative response. The unresolved issue is whether the system that regulates construction will be examined with the same seriousness as the individuals accused after a structure has already failed.
