The Bombay high court on Wednesday reprimanded the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation for illegally constructing a compound wall around the Kanjurmarg dumping ground in a Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ)
The Bombay high court on Wednesday reprimanded the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation for illegally constructing a compound wall around the Kanjurmarg dumping ground in a Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) area and asked it to inform the court the date by which it would demolish the said wall.
“You are the statute body and that does not give you licence to violate law,” said the division bench of Chief Justice D.H. Waghela and Justice M.S. Sonak. The bench told the BMC that it would hear its petition only after it informs the court when it is going to demolish the illegal wall constructed by it.
When BMC’s counsel S.U. Kamdar told the court that it is the only sewage treatment facility in Mumbai and there was a need to construct a boundary wall. “Because of the wall, there are no encroachments and the land is free from anti-social elements,” said advocate Kamdar. To protect the land from encroachment the Municipal Corporation constructed it and has made an application before the Maharashtra Coastal Zone Management Authority (MCZMA) and this application is pending.
“If MCZMA rejects our (BMC) application, we don’t have a choice but to demolish it and put up barbed wire,” said Mr Kamdar. However the bench was annoyed with this answer and said that first it constructed the wall in blatant violation of CRZ rules and now it was trying to get it regularised. This is a serious violation of the law and is punishable under criminal law. “We will not spare anybody,” said the bench.
