Bollywood to sue M'rashtra Govt

The PIL is against poor handling of floods that killed nearly 400 in Mumbai. Mumbaikars' experience | Share yours

Leading Bollywood personalities on Sunday decided to file a public interest litigation (PIL) against the Maharashtra government for its poor handling of the floods that killed nearly 400 people in Mumbai.

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The move came amid growing resentment in different parts of the city over the failure of the government agencies to activate a disaster management plan to mitigate personal and commercial losses inflicted by the floods.

"We have decided to file a suit against the government in a local court on Monday for the way it handled the situation in the city," said filmmaker Vinta Nanda.

"We are citizens of this city and we have to push and motivate the system to respond in a better manner to crisis situations like the one we are facing now," Nanda said after a meeting of film personalities.

Leading Bollywood personalities like Mahesh Bhatt, Koel Puri and Neena Gupta are part of the group that will file the suit.

"There should be accountability. The authorities should look at the basic infrastructure before allowing the construction of high rises," said Nanda.

Experts say while Mumbai was paralysed largely due to natural disaster, the absence of a crisis management plan made people undergo a unprecedented suffering even by standards of a city whose streets routinely get flooded every monsoon.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had last year said his government would transform Mumbai into "another Shanghai" as part of a larger plan of urban renewal.