Mumbai: In a significant ruling, the Bombay High Court held that in cases of dilapidated buildings, courts cannot pass orders to maintain ‘status quo.’
The court said such orders go in favour of dilapidated or dangerous buildings and pose a threat not just to the lives of the tenants but also the neighbours and pedestrians.
The court also ruled that the ‘routine’ practice of courts accepting an ‘undertaking’ by the tenants of dangerous buildings and allowing them to reside till further orders, must be stopped.
A bench of Justices Satyaranjan Dharmadhikari and Gautam Patel delivered the ruling while dismissing a plea filed by 16 tenants of a chawl in Borivli, challenging the demolition notice, served by the civic body.
The tenants also challenged the reports submitted by the Technical Advisory Committee (TAC), an independent expert panel, which recommended demolition of the chawl in question. They urged the bench to direct the BMC to maintain status quo at the site in view of the ‘undertaking’ they propose to submit.
In their undertakings, the tenants said they would not blame anyone for any mishap and accordingly urged the judges to order the BMC not to disconnect the water and electricity supply.
Having heard the contentions, the judges said, “We fail to see the value of such an undertaking. Should there be a mishap to the person giving the undertaking, perhaps even a loss of life, then that undertaking, no matter what its verbiage and legalese, serves no purpose at all. In that situation, it can never be enforced.”
“Therefore, in our view, the practice of permitting persons to continue in occupation on the basis of such undertakings has no warrant in law,” the judges ruled.
The bench further said the undertakings are only concerned with the tenants and does not absolve the civic body from the loss caused to a third party, which could be passers-by or one residing in the neighbourhood.
While rejecting the prayer seeking a status quo orders, the judges said that in case of a dilapidated building facing a demolition notice is protected with such orders, then it would mean allowing the building to degrade and become more ruinous.
“In the case of a dilapidated building, a generalised order of status quo without reference to the state of affairs only means that the building should be allowed to continue to deteriorate further, and that persons are allowed to continue to occupy the building that has been found to be dangerous not only to themselves but to the general public,” the judges said.
“Such an order of status quo itself poses and carries a risk not only to the occupants themselves but also to others who are not connected with the matter. That stripe of generalised, non-specific status quo order in demolition cases is contrary to law, to statute, to precedent, and even logic: there can be no status quo preventing the monsoon, for instance, or any other force of nature, nor will it operate to prevent continuing structural degradation over time,” the order authored by Justice Patel reads.
