HC stays allotment of 3,000-sqm Cuffe Parade plot for a private school
A division bench of justices GS Kulkarni and Arif Doctor passed the order on a petition filed by the Cuffe Parade Residents Association (CPRA), claiming that the allotment was illegal and contrary to several legal requirements.
CPRA, through its honorary secretary Preeti Bedi, had challenged a September 2024 government resolution (GR) allotting the plot, which was reserved for parking lots in Mumbai's Development Plan 2034, to the Jain International Organisation for setting up a primary and secondary school. The plot was recently vacated by the Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation Ltd, which was using it while constructing the underground Aqua line.
'There is a great need for a parking area in the locality and the petitioners have been addressing letters to the collector to ensure that the said plot, which was recently vacated by the MMRCL, was duly walled/fenced, protected from encroachments and allowed to be used for parking of vehicles,' stated the petition.
It added that residents learned that the plot had been allotted to the nonprofit only after it set up its board at the site, stating that the state government had handed it over to them in September 2024 to build a school.
When the petition came up for hearing on June 26, CPRA's lawyer, senior advocate Aspi Chinoy, argued that the allotment was illegal and arbitrary, and amounted to a 'colourable exercise of powers' by the authorities involved. He added that residents of the area were being robbed of the plot's benefits by allotting it illegally and contrary to several legal requirements.
Chinoy said the plot, which is reserved under the Development Plan, could not have been allotted to a 'private body' and, that too, on the conditions as set out in the allotment letter, which required the allottee to get the reservation of the plot changed.
'Prima facie, we are of the opinion that there is substance in the contention as urged on behalf of the petitioner,' the court said, while staying the implementation of the GR. It restrained the Jain International Organisation from taking any further steps on the plot.
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