Mumbai: Pulling up the Mumbai civic body over its failure to act against encroachers by slum-dwellers near a Powai school, the Bombay high court on Thursday directed the highest officer of the municipal ward concerned, along with the most senior officer of the local police station, to remain present on Friday.The school is at Hiranandani Gardens in Powai, and the HC division bench of Justices RV Ghuge and Abhay Mantri queried whether the BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) was powerless.
The HC directed the deputy municipal commissioner to file an affidavit on the issues of removal of encroachments and the toilets around it.The BMC counsel, Dhruti Kapadia, said she would seek instructions from civic officials to get the timelines for demolition. The HC gave the BMC an opportunity to place its stand on affidavit.The petition before the HC was filed by Kalyani Patnaik, principal of Beaumont HFSI Pre-Primary School. It claimed that the BMC ignored complaints against unauthorised slum-dwellers on the road and also enabled them with toilet blocks and tanker water.After the BMC counsel said the encroachers, pursuant to court orders, were earlier removed from another area in Jai Bheem Nagar, Justice Ghuge on Thursday remarked orally, “Before we really get angry with the corporation, we will put it in a lighter way. This is like that Tom and Jerry show. You remove somebody from here, Jerry runs there.”Justice Ghuge upbraided the BMC orally, saying, “Anybody can come and put a hutment and start staying on the main road… Why don’t you tell us that you don’t have the will, desire, means, and courage to remove encroachment on the roads? So, we will at least record that so that Mumbai can be surrendered to encroachers. Should we say you are powerless? You are surrendering Mumbai to all these encroachers,” Justice Ghuge said.The bench said that BMC officials should also remove a mobile toilet.“We will blast them (officers) if they tell us lies, and we will direct their demotion. We will transfer them somewhere to a place where they will not get water… This (encroachment) is your (BMC’s) creation and appeasement. By this, you are encouraging encroachers,” the judge remarked.“We are all humans, and we have a limited stay on this earth and are not immortals…” Justice Ghuge added, saying the city must be maintained for future generations. “But your next generation is going to say that our earlier generation was callous and careless, and they gave us encroachment.”
