HC warns civic bosses of prison
For contempt of its orders on illegal festival pandals
The Bombay High Court on Thursday threatened to imprison the municipal commissioners of Mumbai, Navi Mumbai and the Kalyan-Dombivli cities. The court has issued show cause notices to the chiefs of all the three civic bodies asking as to why contempt proceedings should not be initiated against them.
A division bench of Justice Abhay Oka and Justice Anil Menon were irked to see the “apathy” of the civic bodies in initiating action against the illegal pandals put up in the three cities during the Ganpati and Navratri festivals.
According to the details submitted to the judges, nearly 42 pandals were found to be illegal in Mumbai and 62 in Navi Mumbai. Also, a total of 36 unauthorised pandals were identified in the jurisdiction of Kalyan-Dombivli Municipal Corporation.
Having vetted the documents placed on record, the judges noted that none of the officers (in all the three cities) had visited the spot and neither was any action initiated.
Irked by this, Justice Oka said, “The civic bodies are resorting to all possible tactics to ensure that this court’s orders are not implemented. We are of the opinion that unless we do not take some drastic steps, the corporations would not implement this court’s orders in letter and spirit.”
“The act of the officers is clearly in breach of the orders passed by this court. We think unless some municipal commissioner is sent to jail and put behind bars, there would be no compliance of our orders,” Justice Oka added.
The judges accordingly issued notices to Ajoy Mehta – BMC chief, N. Ramaswamy – Commissioner of NMMC and P Velrasu, civic chief of KDMC. The three commissioners will have to file an affidavit spelling out as to why the court should not initiate contempt of court proceedings against them. The judges have asked the commissioners to file their replies latest by September 30.
The judges were hearing a batch of petitions seeking effective implementation of Noise Pollution Rules, 2000. These already disposed petitions were taken up for hearing for reporting compliance to the detailed judgement passed by a division bench of Justice Abhay Oka and Justice Amjad Sayed in 2016.