HC permits Christmas music festival at larger area on Girgaum Chowpatty

Mumbai: The Bombay High Court (HC) on Tuesday permitted Prabhu Yeshu Janmotsav, a public trust, to conduct their annual Christmas music festival at Girgaum Chowpatty in an area larger than the permitted area

Mumbai: The Bombay High Court (HC) on Tuesday permitted Prabhu Yeshu Janmotsav, a public trust, to conduct their annual Christmas music festival at Girgaum Chowpatty in an area larger than the permitted area. The court has allowed the organisation to hold the festival on 15,000 sq m as opposed to the 4,180 sq m permitted for the event, in line with orders passed in previous years.

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In 2022, a bench of this court had allowed the trust to conduct the event on a larger area in a similar application. Similar orders were also passed in 2018 and 2019. In light of this fact, the court found no need to modify its earlier orders.

The interim order was passed by a bench of Justice AS Gadkari and Justice Shyam C Chandak in an application seeking review of a 2018 order of the court allowing the trust to organise the event on an area of 4,180 sq. m. In the review petition, the trust had sought an allocation of 25,000 sq m for the event, considering the large crowd expected.

Advocate Mihir Desai, assisted by advocates Jatin Sheth and Ankur Shah, appeared for the charitable trust. According to Desai, the trust had approached the court seeking a review of an earlier order of the court in 2018. However, it was adjourned several times and was never heard. As this year’s event is scheduled to be held this Sunday, December 10, an interim order allowing a larger area must be issued, he said.

However, according to the HC-appointed monitoring committee, there is no need to extend the allocated area from the earlier order as the allocated area is sufficient to accommodate a crowd of 7,000. Moreover, the trust has not asked the corporation to review the earlier permit, nor has it obtained a non-objection certificate for a larger area.

On this point, the trust assured that it will obtain the necessary permissions before the due date. This includes permissions from the collector, local police, traffic police, BMC, etc.