The proverbial "joy" is steadily fading away from the faces of lower and middle-class families living in and around the City of Joy as reports of tilting low-budget high-rises continue to trickle in from Kolkata and beyond.

This, even as the political powers that be indulge in a blame game. On Thursday, more reports emerged of inadequately built "dignified slums" (read: mushrooming high-rises) leaning precariously over adjacent structures, this time in the Tangra and Topsia areas of Kolkata. This led the political opposition to blame the multi-billion builder-TMC-police nexus for the anomaly.

Even as the Building Department of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) issued notices to the occupants of the tilting buildings to vacate their apartments, the owners found themselves in a fix. "Where do we go? We have invested everything... now we are paying loan installments, and the KMC is asking us to vacate the house... so where do we go?" said Ratna, an occupant of a high-rise in Tangra in east-central Kolkata.

Another resident of Tangra said, "We will die in this building but will not move out... what was the KMC doing? Who gave the completion certificate to the building? We purchased the building from the promoter... but how could he manage a sanctioned plan in a world-class city like Kolkata? If they drive me out, then I will commit suicide."

A resident of Baghajatin lamented, "I have invested my whole life's earnings to purchase this small flat, and now they are asking me to go away... where will we go? Does the government have no responsibility? Why has no one been arrested till now when reports of tilting houses are coming from so many places?"

Residents at Ward number 75 in Kidderpore said they were living in fear. "We have also purchased a new property... if this building too tilts, where shall we go?"

Indeed, palpable panic gripped Kolkata as multi-storied buildings continued to tilt. Located on Christopher Road in Ward 58, one of the two buildings that tilted on Wednesday has at least two illegally constructed floors, locals said, blaming the builder and the local municipal councilor, who could not be contacted.

A senior Building Department official, requesting anonymity, said, "The cut money goes from down to the top... even beyond the Mayor level... we are just cogs in the wheels... we are forced to sanction the plans for buildings coming up on filled lands where water bodies existed even a decade ago."

According to internal reports, a back-of-the-envelope survey puts a total of 30 high-rises in Kolkata in the "tilted class." Most of the buildings are not even 15 years old, and some are less than 10 years old.

While there are nearly no reports of tilted buildings coming from old North Kolkata, "leaning towers" have been reported mostly from Baghajatin, Topsia, Tangra, and some localities around the comparatively newly developed Eastern Metropolitan Bypass, which skirts the Ramsar World Heritage Sites of water bodies, some several thousand years old. Incidentally, these water bodies are often regarded as the "climatic kidney" of Kolkata.

According to sources, about 100 square kilometers of water bodies have been filled up from New Town to Baruipur in the south. "Go to Gulshan Colony, and you will find about 5,000 voters but more than 2 lakh residents, many of whom are suspected to have come from the other side of the border... they are living in mushrooming multi-story buildings that have come up on filled-up water bodies... the KMC has allowed rampant filling of these water bodies, and money changes hands like anything... it is a matter of several thousand crores," said a retired senior official of the KMC.

Kolkata is not the only culprit. Similar reports of tilting houses have emerged from the twin city of Howrah and Kamarhati, a municipality in the northern suburb of Kolkata. After reports of a house tilting in Kamarhati emerged, local Municipal Chairman Gopal Saha, along with a local councilor, civic officials, engineers, and police, inspected the site on Tuesday and immediately stopped construction work. "The structure was unauthorized, and no plan was sanctioned. We have registered an FIR at the Kamarhati police station against the promoter and will demolish the building," he said.

Cut to Kolkata. Mayor Firhad Hakim on Thursday said that "there is no illegal house coming up in Kolkata now." When asked whether he had reports of such houses that had come up in the past 10-15 years, he rolled out a long list of past accidents "in the CPI(M) era."

On why no FIR was lodged against the erring people of the previous era, he parroted an oft-repeated statement nearly patented by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, saying, "We do not go witch-hunting... the Chief Minister does not believe in taking revenge."

Partha Pratim Biswas, a structural engineer and professor at Jadavpur University, said, "Kolkata, unlike other cities, has a limited capacity... the alluvial soil cannot bear so much weight... Kolkata is sitting on the lap of disaster... this problem has been multiplied in the past several years... hundreds of ponds and water bodies have been filled, and high-rises have come up... all for money... the government has to take responsibility."