No serious move to identify illegal religious structures: HC

BENGALURU: BBMP had not seriously undertaken the exercise of identifying religious structures constructed illegally in public places, the Karnataka High Court observed on Monday and said that nobody would believe that Bengaluru had just 106 such structures. A division bench of Chief Justice Abhay Shreeniwas Oka and Justice S Vishwajith Shetty made this observation while hearing a suo motu PIL and directed the BBMP Commissioner to file an affidavit in response to the contempt of court notice issued by the Court for not complying with orders of the Supreme Court and High Court on illegal religious structures. 

The bench said that it was not satisfied with the affidavits filed by the BBMP as no serious exercise was undertaken to comply with the orders passed by the SC and HC, even though contempt notice was issued. The BBMP had also not specified whether those structures were built before September 29, 2009 - the date of the SC order - or after that. The SC order specifies the action to be taken depending on when they were built.

The bench also said the affidavit filed by Additional Chief Secretary Rajneesh Goel merely gave the pandemic as a reason for inaction, and did not mention what steps were taken to implement court orders after March 2020. The bench expressed shock that no steps were taken to correct in the circular the cut off date fixed to identify the structures.

Judicial note has to be taken by the court that what is important is that the affidavits filed by the State and the BBMP do not disclose steps taken to implement the orders passed by the court and whether the structures are to be tolerated or relocated, the bench said.“Nothing prevented them from complying with the SC orders from 2009. We grant one more opportunity for them to comply the orders of the courts in true spirit”, the bench said, asking them to file affidavits on or before January 14, 2021.