Maharashtra government failed to raze illegal shrines

Despite several orders, state didn’t act against 3/4th of illegal structures.

The Bombay high court on Tuesday rapped the Maharashtra government for dragging its feet over the demolition of 27,954 illegal shrines built on public spaces such as footpaths, roads, gardens and playgrounds.

The high court observed that despite its repeated orders in the past, the state did not act against “3/4th” of the illegal shrines meant for demolition.

So far, the state authorities have demolished only 907 illegal shrines. “It is complete failure on the part of the state government. You have done nothing to demolish them. You are scared about people, but thousands of shrines have been demolished so far and no one protested yet,\" said the court.

A division bench of Justice Abhay Oka and Justice A.A. Sayed was hearing a PIL filed by city NGO Janhit Manch seeking that the Maharashtra government be directed to demolish illegal shrines across the state. Acting on the PIL, the court had directed the government to submit a time-bound schedule for demolition of illegal shrines.

According to the petition, the Supreme Court had ordered, on September 29 2009, that all illegal structures be demolished in Maharashtra, but the state government didn't demolish any such structure till 2011.Therefore, the high court passed an order after that and state government issued a GR to all the corporations and district collectors to demolish the structures. However, till 2015, the state was allegedly delaying the demolition process and the HC asked it to submit a time-bound programme detailing how the demolition work would be carried out. On November 18 2015 the state government issued a new GR and ordered all the corporations and district collectors to complete the demolition by August 17 2016.

On Tuesday, the state government filed an affidavit showing the action taken by it from November 18 2015 to August 31 2016.

According to the affidavit, 36,414 illegal structures were constructed in the state before September 29 2009 and 523 of them were demolished. There are 1,718 were structures that were constructed illegally after September 29 2009, but only 384 of them were demolished by state authorities till August 31 2016.