I have been following this newspaper’s dogged reporting of alleged unauthorised constructions in the jurisdiction of the Vasai-Virar City Municipal Corporation for a few weeks now. I have read the comments made by VVCMC officials, read multiple reports of how the hard-working Anti-Corruption Bureau of Thane immediately swung into action a few years after the buildings appeared, and have also looked at what activists have been saying for a while. The only conclusion I can arrive at is that there must be some sort of mistake. A clerical error, perhaps, or a few hundred misplaced files. There is no other explanation for how these buildings appeared almost overnight, as if by magic.

Allegations of any housing scam have always been hard for me to swallow because, as anyone living in Bombay knows, our municipal officials are among the most honest people in the country. They would never allow anything illegal to go past their desks. In fact, whenever allegations like these have surfaced every other year in the past, we have learned that they have been minor misunderstandings at best. When it comes to construction anywhere in Bombay, not a stone can be moved into a place it doesn’t belong, which is why these reports of a scam seem so hollow.