HC directs civic body to demolish 63 shrines

Mumbai: THE Bombay High Court on Thursday directed the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) to demolish 63 illegal shrines and unauthorised religious structures on roads, lanes, footpaths and public land in the city by August 23.

Hearing a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by non-governmental organisation Janhit Manch in 2002, a division bench of Justices R M Lodha and N H Patil also directed Police Commissioner A N Roy to assist the civic body during demolitions. While the court will decide on the fate of 113 illegal shrines that fall under the jurisdiction of the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority and the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority during the next hearing on August 24, it directed the BMC to file a reply on the status of 21 other shrines, whose cases were pending in court.

On June 21, the court had directed the deputy municipal commissioner (Special) to file an affidavit stating the exact number of illegal shrines in the city.

Following this, Deputy Municipal Commissioner (Special) Vijaykumar Kalam submitted that the BMC had demolished 1,015 illegal shrines and was yet to demolish 864 shrines.

In 2002, following Janhit Manch’s Bhagvanji Raiyani’s petition on the mushrooming of illegal religious structures in the city, the court had directed the BMC to demolish the structures and 1,100 illegal shrines were razed.

But according to Raiyani, there are still around 5,000 illegal shrines in the city. In the last court hearing, he also pointed out that no officials were taken to task for permitting such structures.

Meanwhile, residents of Vazira Naka in Borivali intervened asking for six months to demolish a Ganesh temple in their locality and said they would demolish it themselves.

The court, however, granted time till August 15 and said that if they failed to demolish it, the BMC would step in.

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