I have spent years reporting from the Northeast, including Darjeeling, and have watched the hills changing. Now there are more roads, more hotels, more concrete and increasingly dense construction on fragile slopes.
I am not against development as it is necessary. But in a Himalayan town, the question cannot simply be how much we build. It must also be where, how and under what rules we build it. That is what made unauthorised construction in Darjeeling a personal concern for me.
I began with a simple question: what happens after the government declares a building illegal? Does the process end with a notice? Or does the state actually enforce its own order?
My concern eventually became part of a Public Interest Litigation before the Calcutta High Court, WPA(P) 493/2025, Chandrani Sinha & Anr. v. Union of India & Ors. The petition raised concerns about unauthorised construction, hill cutting, building regulation and the ecological and disaster risks associated with unchecked construction in Darjeeling.
In January 2026, the Calcutta High Court issued an interim direction requiring the Darjeeling Municipality to ensure that illegal construction was not permitted within its municipal limits until the next date of hearing.
But for me, that order raised an even larger question: If the government knows a building is unauthorised, how does that building continue to function? Who gives it water? Who enables its electricity connection? Does it receive a trade licence? Does it pay property tax? Does it obtain an occupancy certificate? Who signs those documents?
These are not minor administrative questions. They go to the heart of governance.
Darjeeling is part of one of the world’s most geologically active mountain systems. The Indian and Eurasian plates continue to converge, making earthquakes an unavoidable part of Himalayan life.
The 2015 magnitude 7.8 earthquake in Nepal and its aftershocks triggered approximately 25,000 landslides across more than 30,000 square kilometres of the Himalaya.
That disaster should permanently influence how we think about construction in the hills. Darjeeling’s vulnerability does not stop at earthquakes.
The district administration identifies landslides as a recurring hazard and describes parts of Kurseong as highly vulnerable. Kalimpong’s district administration identifies earthquakes and landslides as major hazards and places the district in Seismic Zone IV.
Mirik, Kurseong, Darjeeling and Kalimpong may have different administrative identities, but they share a common geography: steep terrain, fragile slopes, intense rainfall and growing development pressure.
Darjeeling receives roughly 1,870–3,690 mm of rainfall annually, while some southern slopes receive around 4,000–5,000 mm.
Historical records include extraordinary rainfall events of hundreds of millimetres in a single day. In such terrain, drainage, slope cutting, retaining walls, soil conditions and structural design are not technical details. They can determine whether a slope remains stable.
Climate change adds another layer of risk. It would be scientifically wrong to claim that climate change causes Himalayan earthquakes; earthquakes are primarily driven by tectonic processes.
But climate change is altering rainfall, glacier, snow and hydrological conditions across the Himalaya.
The consequence is an increasingly complex risk environment where extreme rainfall, landslides, floods, slope instability and expanding infrastructure can interact. That is why building regulation should be understood as disaster-risk reduction, not merely municipal paperwork.
West Bengal’s own building framework recognises the special risks of construction in hilly terrain. Requirements concerning soil testing, slope stability, structural safety and earthquake-resistant standards exist precisely because construction on a Himalayan slope cannot be treated like construction on flat land.
So what happens when those rules are violated? This brings me to the question of water. Under the West Bengal Municipal Building Rules, the process for obtaining water and sewer connections involves documentation connected to the sanctioned building plan and occupancy. The rules also provide for action against unauthorised water or sewer connections.
So I want to ask: If a municipality has already declared a building unauthorised, on what legal basis does that building obtain or retain a municipal water connection?
Electricity requires a separate but equally important investigation because distribution is handled by the electricity utility, not the municipality.
What documents are required before an electricity connection is provided?
Is an occupancy certificate required? Is a sanctioned building plan required?
Does the electricity distributor receive information when a municipality declares a building unauthorised? If it does, what happens to the connection? And if it does not, why is there no system for sharing information when public safety may be at stake?
These questions should not be dismissed as accusations. They are questions that can be answered through records. And this is where the discussion about corruption must become evidence-based.
If corruption exists, there should be a paper trail: unexplained approvals, missing documents, irregular regularisation, preferential treatment, illegal payments or decisions inconsistent with the applicable rules.
But corruption is not the only possible explanation. It could be administrative negligence. It could be poor coordination between government agencies. It could be political interference. It could be a regulatory system in which notices are issued, but enforcement gets trapped in years of proceedings.
The point is that the public should know which of these is happening. That requires a building-by-building audit across Darjeeling, Kurseong, Mirik and Kalimpong.
We need to know: How many unauthorised buildings have been identified? How many notices were issued? How many final orders followed? How many were demolished or altered? How many were legally regularised?
How many remain pending? How many have water connections? How many have electricity? How many have trade licences? How many have occupancy certificates? And, crucially, who approved each of these?
The administrative trail should be simple: land, then building permission, sanctioned plan, construction, inspection, violation, notice, hearing, final order, regularisation, where legally permitted, water, electricity, trade licence, occupancy, present status.
If the government declares a building illegal but continues to provide the infrastructure that allows it to operate, we have moved beyond an individual violation. We have an accountability problem.
And this matters because an unauthorised building does not exist in isolation. It occupies land. It changes drainage. It consumes water.
It generates sewage and waste. It depends on roads. It may house hundreds of people. In a fragile mountain environment, one poorly regulated construction can affect far more people than its owner.
The same government that regulates construction is therefore also responsible for understanding the cumulative risk created when hundreds of structures are added to slopes over time.
I do not believe the answer is to stop Darjeeling, Kurseong, Mirik or Kalimpong from developing.
The hills need homes, jobs, tourism and infrastructure. But development has to respect the landscape.
The Himalaya will continue to move. Earthquakes will continue to occur. Extreme rainfall will continue to test slopes. Climate change will continue to alter the conditions under which these hazards interact.
My PIL was not simply about stopping a building. It came from a larger concern – whether the rules created to protect people and the Himalayan environment are actually being implemented.
That is why the question I keep returning to is not simply who is building the illegal building. Who allowed it to become a functioning building after the government knew it was illegal? In Darjeeling, that question deserves an answer before the next disaster, not after it.
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