Adarsh residents to appeal in Supreme Court

‘The land was allotted by Maharashtra government, and MMRDA gave permission to construct the building’

Residents of the Adarsh Co-operative Housing Society, the 31-storey high rise in Colaba in South Mumbai, said on Friday they would challenge the Bombay High Court order directing the Centre to demolish the residential tower where Maharashtra’s powerful politicians and bureaucrats were allotted flats.

“We will appeal against the order in the Supreme Court. We have a lot of faith in the judiciary and we know that we haven’t committed any wrong. The High Court has granted a stay on the demolition for 12 weeks, and we will file an appeal within that time,” said Mr. Thakur, a retired defence estates officer who was one of the 13 accused charge sheeted by the CBI, and continues to be the secretary of the society.

“Both judges said they were against the demolition. So if they have passed an order to demolish, we need to see the facts and figures that have come before the High Court and what the recorded points are before we can comment on it,” said Mr. Thakur.

Defending the society’s stand that it had the requisite permission to construct the building, Mr. Thakur said: “The land was allotted by the Maharashtra government, and the MMRDA gave the permission to construct this building. The MMRDA even filed an affidavit that there has been no unauthorised construction in this case. The affidavit was part of this hearing as well. We were even given occupancy certificates in 2010.”

The order to demolish the building first came in 2011 from the then Minister of Environment and Forests (MoEF) Jairam Ramesh after the Adarsh society was issued a show-cause notice. Soon, the state agencies cut off the water and electricity supply to the building.

The building continues to be without power or water, and no resident has been able to move into it since the scandal came to light in 2010. “We have a generator that we use whenever we come to the office. Residents are keen to occupy the flats that they have spent their hard-earned money on,” said Mr. Thakur. The building has 104 members.

In a related development, Pravin Wategaonkar, one of the petitioners in the case, demanded that former Maharashtra Chief Ministers Sushil Kumar Shinde and Shivajirao Patil Nilangekar also be prosecuted by the CBI in this case. “Both had handled the Adarsh files, and the CBI should now reinvestigate their role, and make them accused in the case,” he said.