Bombay HC says Kalyan school ‘monument to illegality’

“This school is a monument to illegality, and to a deliberate, wilful and conscious defiance and snubbing of law,” said the bench of Justice SC Dharmadhikari and Justice GS Patel, referring to the building of Vishwas Vidyalaya New English School run by Moraya Shikshan Sanstha.

The Bombay high court (HC) last week refused to stall demolition of an illegal school building at Kalyan, terming it “a monument to illegality”.

The officer-bearers had approached the HC this year after the civic body started issuing notices calling for land record and development permissions from the institution. (Representative image)

“This school is a monument to illegality, and to a deliberate, wilful and conscious defiance and snubbing of law,” said the bench of Justice SC Dharmadhikari and Justice GS Patel, referring to the building of Vishwas Vidyalaya New English School run by Moraya Shikshan Sanstha.

“Under no circumstance will we countenance this,” the bench said and dismissed a petition filed by the school’s office-bearers challenging demolition notices issued by the Kalyan Dombivli Municipal Corporation (KDMC).

The officer-bearers had approached the HC this year after the civic body started issuing notices calling for land record and development permissions from the institution.

They sought protection for the school building from demolition, contending that the plot of land where the school was constructed was anyway reserved for a school and the construction could be regularised.

The bench, however, refused to accept the request pointing out that what is illegal right from its inception, cannot be regularised later.

It said it cannot invoke its writ jurisdiction to allow the school building to stand and permit a retroactive approval of the same.

“It would mean that the planning authorities set at naught the planning laws by allowing and tolerating such activities,” the bench said.

“What principles or values such an institution can possibly inculcate or impart to young, receptive and impressionable minds if its entire existence is predicated on a rank illegality, a flouting of the law and a brazen subversion of the rule of law,” the HC added.