Failure to frame Municipal bye-laws
Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Oct 8: Division Bench of High Court comprising Chief Justice Pankaj Mithal and Justice Rajnesh Oswal has treated the LPA seeking framing of Municipal bye-laws as Public Interest Litigation and arrayed Chief Secretary and Commissioner Secretary Housing and Urban Development Department as respondents. Moreover, the DB has directed Senior AAG to inform the Court about the status/progress of bye-laws within six weeks.
Earlier Division Bench comprising Justice Dheeraj Singh Thakur and Justice Puneet Gupta, while deciding a Letter Patents Appeal, had taken a serious note of the failure of the Municipal Committees and Municipal Councils to frame building bye-laws, master plans or building schemes.
The DB had observed that while the building bye-laws and Master Plans have been framed for cities of Jammu and Srinagar but some of the smaller towns governed by Municipal Committees and Municipal Councils are still having no building bye-laws, master plans or schemes. The court also found it understandable as to how in the absence of a building scheme, master plan, building bye-laws and regulations, Municipal Committee Sunderbani, to which the matter pertained, was proceeding to exercise powers sanctioning the plans and compounding the building violations.
The DB had further observed that there was no justification in denying the citizens living in smaller towns the civil rights which ought to be protected by framing/enforcing the building by laws and by regulating the construction activity for planned development.
Today, Division Bench comprising Chief Justice Pankaj Mithal and Justice Rajnesh Oswal, after hearing Advocate Vilakshan Singh appearing for the appellant Som Nath whereas Senior AAG SS Nanda for the Housing Department, observed, “in the absence of the Rules/Regulations/Bye-laws/Schemes governing the construction activity in some of the areas covered by the Municipalities, large-scale activity is going on in an illegal way disturbing the entire infrastructure of the cities and causing serious problems with regard to civic amenities”.
The court, therefore, opined that the matter be dealt with as a Public Interest Litigation for the purposes of getting the necessary Rules/Regulations/Bye-laws framed for the purposes of controlling the building activities in such areas. Accordingly, DB arrayed Chief Secretary and Commissioner/Secretary, Housing and Urban Development Department as respondents and granted six weeks time for filing status of bye-laws.
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