HC to Bombay Dyeing: Hand over land to BMC, Mhada

Mumbai: Textile major Bombay Dyeing will have to hand over massive chunks of its sprawling mill properties in Dadar-Naigaon and Lower Parel to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation and Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (Mhada). 

    The Bombay high Court on Friday dismissed petitions challenging stop-work notices to Bombay Dyeing for its failure to hand over one third of its mill land to the BMC to set up compulsory open spaces and recreation grounds and another one-third to Mhada for affordable low-cost houses. 

    A division bench of Chief JusticeMohit Shah andJustice Roshan Dalvi vacated the court's earlier stay on the stop work notices. The court has stayed its order for eight weeks to allow Bombay Dyeing to file an appeal. 

    The court's order means that Mhada and the BMC will get around 65,000sq ftof landin prime locations in the city. Activists and the state have been fighting to ensure erstwhile mill lands benefit the public and are not only used to house private residential and commercial towers and the order is a major victory for them. 

    The projects are coming up on the company's erstwhile mill plots, Spring Mills in Dadar-Naigaon and another in Lower Parel. The plans for the mills include a 38-storey residential-cum-commercial and retail, IT spaces and a hotel. 

    The stop-work notices (dated March 26, 2010) were issued on theordersof the monitoring committee headed by Justice (Retd) B V Chavan, which was set up to oversee mill land development projects. 

    Senior advocate Navroz Seervai, counsel for Bombay Dyeing, had argued that the company wascarrying outconstruction on its existing builtup land and the question of handing over plots to the BMC and Mhada would come up only when it completed construction on 30% of the remaining plot. Mhada's lawyer G W Mattosopposedthis argument,saying there was as no concept of built-up land under the rules.