MUMBAI: Bombay high court on Tuesday directed BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) to conduct its standing committee meeting with 647 agenda items as scheduled on Wednesday, the first since the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown began in March, as a physical meeting with personal presence of its 27 members and other civic staff. The meeting was otherwise scheduled to be held virtually via video-conference(VC), which the BJP challenged and sought orders for holding of a “physical meeting.’’
The decision of the BMC to hold a VC meeting of the most important civic panel after almost seven months of being in abeyance and posting almost 650 items in the agenda on a single day, prompted two BJP corporators including its group leader Prabhakar Shinde and Makrand Narvekar to approach the HC with a public interest litigation (PIL). BJP is the second largest party in the BMC after Shiv Sena.
Amogh Singh, counsel for the BJP councilors said “Rs 2000 crore of public funds” were at stake and said the apprehension was that in a VC meeting, members may be muted and proper deliberations may not take place for approval of so many decisions. He also said, “if they can crystallise 50 important ones, members can prepare.’’
Senior counsel Aspi Chinoy with advocate Joel Carlos for standing committee chief Yashwant Jadhav said the agenda list was long and ”daunting’’ only because of the backlog from all these months when no meeting was held. “We will go through the matters serially, will deliberate and take what we can. It is certainly not any one’s understanding that 647 will be passed on one day.’’ The HC in its order recorded Chinoy’s statement.
Senior counsel Anil Sakhare for the BMC said the civic chief Iqbal Chahal had already on October 14 written to the Maharashtra governor for permission to hold a physical meeting in the civic general body hall at BMC Headquarters at CST. But he said he was still awaiting a reply from the government. The request was made because pandemic guidelines do not allow large gatherings, he said.
“We appreciate corporation’s efforts during Covid… If corporation standing committee members are not allowed physical meeting what message does it send to society,’’ said bench of Chief Justice Dipankar Datta and Justice Girish Kulkarni.
The CJ said, “this is the first time in six months that BMC will hold a VC meeting. We know from experience, from time virtual court started, there can be teething problems…It is working necessity. We will intervene.’’
The PIL hearing was kept back twice by the HC. The second time, the bench said testily to the government lawyer when he had no instructions on state’s response to BMC request for physical meeting, “ you should have anticipated this would be our question. Why has the state no responded yet?’’
The bench then said it would pass orders for holding the meet physically since it is the large domed hall which can seat 300 persons, and the Standing committee meeting will have less than 50 persons.