Encroachment of playground: HC seeks responses from BMC, SRA

MUMBAI: The Bombay high court on Friday directed the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) and the Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA) to file affidavits regarding encroachment on a 6,000-square metre plot, reserved for a playground, next to St Elias High School in Khar West.

A bench comprising chief justice Alok Aradhe and justice Bharati Dangre was hearing a public interest litigation by three Khar residents – Dileep Saptarshi, Robert Wiesinger and Sunil Bhatia – who claimed that the SRA had allowed a developer commence construction on the plot despite a 1995 restraining order from the supreme court.

Saptarshi and Wiesinger had first moved the high court in 1988, seeking directions to the BMC to implement the 1966 development plan, where the plot was reserved as a recreation ground. In November 1988, the high court directed BMC to prevent additional encroachments on the plot, after which the plot was reserved as a playground in the 1992 development plan. On April 3, 1995, the supreme court directed the BMC to demarcate the 6,000-sqyare metre plot and not permit any encroachments or construction on it, but the plot was never fenced.

In 2019, work on a slum rehabilitation project commenced on an adjacent plot, while in August 2021, excavation began on the reserved plot, advocate Gayatri Singh, representing the petitioners, told the court. On October 1, 2021, the petitioners wrote to the authorities to urgently demarcate and develop the playground, saying instead of developing the playground, “groundwork for massive constructions has commenced” on the plot.

The PIL mentioned that the school has nearly 2,000 students and there is “absolutely no open space either for private use or for public use, for young children in the locality to use as a playground.”

After perusing the arguments, the judges said that the BMC should not have allowed the SRA to undertake construction on the reserved plot, especially in the light of apex court’s restraining order. After having realised that the SRA had encroached upon the plot, the BMC should have stopped the construction, the court said.