The petitioner, Renuka Batlivala, had challenged the orders passed by the BMC on February 1, directing her to vacate two plots in Powai, measuring 2,247 sq m, within two weeks.The Bombay High Court has imposed a fine of Rs 10 lakh on a 75-year-old woman, a resident of south Mumbai, while observing that the petitioner was wasting precious time of the court. The woman had filed a petition against Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s (BMC) order directing her to vacate two civic body-owned plots of land in Powai.
In an order issued last month, a division bench of Justice SC Dharmadhikari and Justice BP Colabawalla said: “We are increasingly finding that such litigations are filed in this court and which we would not hesitate to term as ‘chance litigations’ (sic). This practice has to be nipped in the bud and litigants who engage in this kind of litigation and waste precious judicial time, should be saddled with heavy costs so that it would dissuade other parties (like the petitioners in this case) from filing such frivolous petitions.”
The petitioner, Renuka Batlivala, had challenged the orders passed by the BMC on February 1, directing her to vacate two plots in Powai, measuring 2,247 sq m, within two weeks.
Batlivala told the court that the two BMC-owned lands at Powai had been leased to her predecessors in 1963. When the lease expired in April 2001, the civic body’s hydraulics engineer, through a letter dated November 4, 2003, had extended it till 2031. But in April 2007, the BMC told the petitioner that it had decided not to renew, extend or grant a fresh lease.
Batlivala ’s lawyer argued that if the court holds that the leases do not stand renewed, then she was entitled to a notice and hearing from the BMC. Batlivala said that if the lease had expired in 2001, the BMC had still been accepting rent or monthly compensation from her for over a decade.
Finding that the writ petition is an “abuse of the process” of the court, the bench noted that the engineer’s letter clearly stipulated that the lease of the plots may be extended for a period of 30 years from April 8, 2001, subject to approval of the improvements committee/corporation. The bench said that though the lease has expired on April 7, 2001, Batlivala is still occupying the plots for almost 18 years. “Merely because the municipal corporation has been accepting rent after the aforesaid date, without anything more, cannot lead us to presume that the lease has been extended,” it added.
