Taking note of the Pongal festival, the Supreme Court on Monday ordered the unsealing of T. Nagar shops, which were sealed from October 31 last, for six weeks.
Special leave petitions
A Bench of Justice Dalveer Bhandari and Justice Dipak Misra passed the order on special leave petitions from the Ranganathan Street Merchants Association and others against the Madras High Court order of December 21, 2011 asking them to approach the monitoring committee for relief.
The Bench passed the order after hearing senior counsel Ravi Shankar Prasad, Altaf Ahmed, Aryama Sundaram, P. Wilson and Counsel V. Balaji for the association and other merchants and Additional Advocate General Guru Krishna Kumar for the State, senior counsel Rajeev Dhavan and counsel T. Mohan for the Consumer Action Group, the petitioner before the High Court.
The Bench in its brief order said, “By our order dated November 11, 2011 this court asked the High Court to hear the association and other applications and pass appropriate orders in accordance with law.”
Instead of dealing with the applications of unsealing, the High Court had directed the monitoring committee to dispose of the applications.
“In the peculiar facts and circumstances of the case, we direct the High Court to dispose of all the unsealing applications filed by the association and others when the matter is taken up for hearing in the fourth week of January. In the peculiar facts and circumstances we deem it appropriate to direct unsealing of the shops for six weeks”, the Bench said and disposed of the matter.
Association's grievance
The association and other shop keepers were aggrieved that the buildings were sealed by declaring them as unauthorised and illegal, when their applications for regularisation were still pending before the authorities concerned for which huge amounts had been collected.
When senior counsel faulted the High Court for asking the petitioners to approach the monitoring committee, Justice Bhandari observed, “When we had asked the High Court to consider the applications, it ought to have decided them on merits.”
“No authority”
When Mr. Guru Krishna Kumar submitted that all the applicants were issued notice about the violations and only the monitoring committee was competent to decide individual matters, Justice Bhandari said: “If they [applicants] or the State are aggrieved over the decision of the monitoring committee what is the remedy? The High Court should have decided the matter and not delegated the matter to an authority which itself has no authority to decide the issue.”
Mr. Aryama Sundaram intervened and brought to the notice of the court a petition filed by the State seeking review of an order passed by the High Court appointing the monitoring committee, saying the committee had no jurisdiction to decide the matter.
When the review petition was still pending how could the applicants approach the committee and seek relief before the same, he asked.
Plea for interim direction
Mr. Prasad pleaded for an interim direction for opening of the shops in view of the Pongal festival and a direction to the High Court to dispose of the pending applications.
The Bench passed the order accordingly.
I dont think safety is the real problem ,these stores are the main shops of highly cashed individuals.These are built with better quality material unlike our road or municipal buildings and if the goverment really cared they should enforce extra safety standards such as emergency planning , higher private safety, building review(am sure these individuals would copoperate on this).Heavily taxing them would make sense but locking the store does not solve problem it just gives a chance for the politicians to get a good deal.
The Hon'ble Supreme Court should take cognizance and issue a directive to the Chennai Police, Chennai Civic Officers to regulate the crowd, in fact what will help the customers and the business and the local residents from danger. All business houses here in the US whether a retail store or a community hall the fire department has regulations with the maximum people allowed and it is strictly followed. Also the roads in T.Nagar are not sufficient enough for the huge crowds that these huge stores draw. If the city, the police and the law departments put their heads together they can control the flow and keep lives safe!
In Andhra Pradesh the developer/builder should mortgage 10% of the buildup area to the sanctioning authority to control violation. " The Owner is required to hand over the ground floor area or first floor or second floor area as the case may be, or 10% of the total build-up are, whichever is less, to the sanctioning authority by way of a Notarised Affidavit and after the setbacks and open spaces are demarcated on this site. The Notarised Affidavit shall be got entered by the sanctioning authority in the Prohibitory Property Watch Register of the Registration Department. Then only the Building Sanction will be released and the owner shall be allowed to commence the construction". the same procedure should be adopted in Tamilnadu also.
I fully endorse Mr. Jayakumar's views. Which one is important - Safety
of the mass or business of few people?
It's surprising to note the shops can be opened for 6 weeks. What if`in these 6 weeks any fire accident occurs? Will the court that releases the shutters take responsibility. India need consistency in implementation of our law. Individuals at judiciary cannot interpret at their will. These will make people loosing faith in the system.
What a joke... I have been to those shops all they sell is the duplicate
products of the original brands. They should banned from selling any of these things. Not to deny the fact that there are no reforms or unions for the employees working here.
By providing false information and facts the petitioners have been able to convince the judiciary and get opened the shops closed for violating the CMDA regulations. The doing and undoing of the sealing of shops is itself a slur on the judiciary now, provided its known to all that the shops at Ranganathan Street are built on gross violations.For the purpose of business and gaining sympathy from judiciary, merchants of T.Nagar dont deserve any respite. The residents of Ranganathan Street have been living in hell for many decades now and Supreme Court in Delhi, unfortunately don't understand this. The counsels who represented the Merchants Association have been the advocates of devil rather than in the interest of public interest. What could be more sad and shame here?
It is a wonder how these shopkeepers violate all norms and brazenly construct buildings. They know fully well that this would be regularised later. It is the residents in this area who are most affected due to congested buildings, large number of workforce who are employed and who are housed in unsanitary conditions, movement of carriage vans in narrow Rameswaram Road through the night, heavy traffic in and around T Nagar, unauthorised and haphazard parking peaking just before festivals, large number of unhygienic eateries which are breeding grounds for rodents etc..
What if the said buildings collapse on a festival day and cause deaths? Wonder how could courts go on to justify building-violations might not cause accidents (if at all) during festival days.
when the building which are deviated, violated, the Development Control Rules of the CMDA, then the CMDA and Local body has powers to issue to stopwork notices, demolation notices & take necessary actions. hereafter the concerned authorities should act immediately on such deviation, violations made by the builders. The citizens/general public should act swiftly/boldly to complain against such deviation, violations of constructions of buildings to CMDA, LOCAL BODY and Govt of Tamilnadu.
More over Govt of Tamilnadu should not pass any ordenance encourage such deviations, violations.
The authorities should investigate and find out who are the people that collected money from these shopkeepers, promising them permits. THen prosecute them so that shopkeepers and business people are not harrassed by corrupt govt officials
A good verdict. But as far as the building violation is concerned,the portion of the building where violation is found can be sealed and not the entire building.If the entire building is under violation of norms then sealing of the entire building is welcomed.
Please Email the Editor