1,000 ex-BMC staff asked to vacate premises in 3 months

Mumbai: The Bombay high court on Friday ordered around 1,000 retired employees of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) staying in its staff quarters to vacate their residences within three months. The petitioners had sought a direction from the court that BMC will have to give ownership of these quarters to them.

According to the petitioners — around six bodies that represent the 1,000-odd employees — they have been residing in various staff quarters located in Goregaon, Vikhroli Parksite, Ghatkopar, Malvani, Malad and Devnar since the 1980s.

The petitioners had approached the court seeking an order vesting in them ownership rights over their residences. The petitions were based upon a 1989 proposal passed in the civic general body meeting that recommended giving ownership rights to retired employees over accommodations provided to them by the civic body.

In 2007, the then civic chief had recommended to the state to put aside the general body’s proposal but no decision had been taken so far.      

Giving the order, a division bench of Justices S.C. Dharmadhikari and B.P. Colabawala said, “These accommodations are public properties and nobody can claim right on such properties”. The court also said not vacating such premises is like “wastage of public money”.

The court observed that the corporation had provided these rooms to employees to get better service from them, and therefore the corporation while allotting the rooms had signed live and license agreements with employees.