HC pulls up BMC over ‘incorrect and callous’ statements

Irked by the “callous and factually incorrect statements” regularly made by civic officials before the court, the Bombay high court (HC) on Friday directed the Brihanmumbai

Irked by the “callous and factually incorrect statements” regularly made by civic officials before the court, the Bombay high court (HC) on Friday directed the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) chief to file an affidavit stating what action he will take to streamline the functioning of his office with regard to court matters.

HT Image

The direction by a division bench of justices SJ Kathawalla and BP Colabawalla came in the light of several civic officials issuing false or incomplete statements or oaths in court, and misleading it.

“Such is the assistance the court gets from the officers of the municipal corporation. If the officers of the corporation do not extend cooperation to the court or to the in-house advocates or the panel lawyers appearing before us, it will be impossible for the court to hear and dispose the few thousand matters pending in this court against the corporation since the last several years,” the judges said.

The bench was hearing the compliance report of its July 2018 order to BMC. The court had ordered the civic body to visit a property where illegal construction was allegedly carried out, and raze the illegal structures, if any.

BMC on Friday told the HC that an assistant engineer had complied with the order in December 2019 by visiting the site and did not find any recent construction there. The officer also said that he had submitted his affidavit after going through all records and files pertaining to the property and the action taken by the department. When the court asked the officer why it took him a year and half to comply with its order, the latter attributed the delay to the city survey office not providing details of the boundaries of the property.

However, after hearing the officer’s submissions and perusing the affidavit, the court observed that the former had made false and incorrect statements as none of the action initiated in the intervening 18 months (from the date of order to the date of the compliance report) had been mentioned in the affidavit. The court also noted that BMC officials had failed to give proper responses to the judges several times.