The Bombay High Court on Friday asked the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) to compensate monetarily to actor Kangana Ranaut against the partial demolition of her office building at Pali Hill. The civic body had demolished parts of the actor’s bungalow cum office on September 9 citing illegal construction after which the actor moved the High Court seeking a stay on the demolition and demand compensation. Now, as reported by Mid-Day, the BMC hasn’t yet received a copy of the HC’s judgment and there’s a possibility that they might just move the Supreme Court.
In her official statement reacting to the HC’s judgment, Mayor Kishori Pednekar said that she was unsatisfied with the decision and wants to know if BMC’s ‘side’ was put before the court properly. She mentioned that in such cases, the decision usually goes in favour of the BMC.
“We will have to study the judgment and have to see if our side was put before the Court properly, we have an entire law department with us. We have been issuing 354A notices (to stop the erection of building or work commenced or carried on unlawfully) as per the MMC Act, and the Court has in the majority of those cases upheld the BMC’s action. So we will have to find why it did not happen in the case of an actor,” she said.
The HC’s decision was hailed by many BJP ministers some of which also said that the BMC should pay the damage charges to Kangana out of their own pocket or by taking money from Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray since the act of demolition was more of a personal attack to suit the Shiv Sena’s vendetta than an act of reprimanding someone for illegal construction.
While the mayor seeks a copy of the judgment to react further, the BJP group leader in BMC, Prabhakar Shinde, said that the municipal commissioner and Mayor should pay from their own pocket, and not touch the civic body’s money. He was quoted as saying, “The entire move was a revengeful act by the BMC and thus they should pay for it and taxpayers’ money should not be wasted. As it is the lawyer fighting this case has been paid Rs 82 lakh so there is no need to pay more.”
In its decision on Friday, the court also asked Kangana to be careful before tweeting. The order read, “We are of the view that the petitioner, being a public-spirited person, should exercise some restraint while tweeting. And if any action is taken at all, it must be within the four walls of the legal system. Any sort of muscle power can not be indulged in by the state. The demolition action smacked of malafide and was carried out to cause substantial losses to the petitioner (Ranaut). Even if one assumes that the malice does not amount to personal bias, it does amount to legal malice.”
Kangana called it a victory of the democracy.