Bombay High Court directs BMC to initiate procedure for making Century Textiles absolute owner of Worli plot

A division bench of Justice Shahrukh J Kathawalla and Justice Burgess P Colabawalla, on March 14, passed a judgement on the plea by the company which claimed that it had approached the BMC on March 27, 2014, to execute the formal Deed of Conveyance and had written several letters to the authorities, with no satisfactory response and therefore a plea was filed in the high court in December 2016.

The land parcel of more than six acres in Worli (Lower Parel division) currently accommodates a residential colony of the company’s workers and employees.

The Century Textile and Industries, in 1918, had applied to Trustees for the Improvement of the City of Bombay for a scheme to provide dwellings for poorer classes under the City of Bombay Improvement Act, 1898.

The said scheme enabled the employer to provide accommodation to the employees who belong to the poorer classes.

The land and buildings which come under the purview of the scheme are leased to employees for a period of 28 years and the ownership of the same would get transferred to the company or employer after the expiration of the lease, provided there was no default during the lease period.

However, senior advocate Janak Dwarkadas for the petitioner company submitted that the 28-year lease period expired on March 31, 1955, but the civic body had not yet transferred the title of the land in favour of the petitioner.

The company said it expended a large amount wherein it had paid the Improvement Trust Board Rs 1.65 lakh required for acquiring said lands and then in January 1991, Rs 39,000 was paid and in May 1927, Rs 1.26 lakh was paid by the company to the board.

These amounts paid over by the petitioner were in turn paid to the owners of these lands.

Senior advocate Joaquim F Reis for the BMC opposed the plea calling it to be non-maintainable on the ground of delay and latches and said that there was complete inaction on the part of the petitioner from 1955 to 2016 and therefore, the petition ought not to be entertained.

The court did not accept the BMC’s submissions and while allowing the plea said that the petitioner sufficiently demonstrated its entitlement to formal conveyance to the said premises and added that “it was unfortunate that for speculative and irrelevant considerations”, the BMC has withheld the same from the petitioner.