Mumbai, Jul 1: The Bombay High Court on Tuesday refused to interfere in the Maharashtra government’s decision to convert the Mayor’s bungalow here into a memorial for late Shiv Sena founder Bal Thackeray, noting it does not find any valid ground of challenge against the policy decision.
A bench of Chief Justice Alok Aradhe and Justice Sandeep Marne, while dismissing a bunch of pleas, said it cannot sit as an appellate authority over the decision taken by planning experts except in cases where there is a “gross violation” in the planning norms.
“Ultimately, what is done is merely change the label of the structure from ‘Mayor’s Bungalow’ to ‘Balasaheb Thackeray Rashtriya Smarak’,” the court said.
The bench said the decision to set up the memorial was a policy decision and it would “loathe” interfering in the same.
The court noted that the work of setting up the memorial is almost complete now and the grandiose structure of the Mayor’s bungalow has not only been kept intact but has been restored and its heritage significance is not disturbed.
The bench while dismissing the petitions said it does not find any valid ground of challenge made out to the decision of the state government.
Thackeray died in November 2012 after a brief illness.
The petitions were filed in 2017 challenging the government’s decision to convert the Mayor’s bungalow, a sprawling sea-side structure at Shivaji Park in central Mumbai, to a memorial for the late Shiv Sena supremo.
The pleas also challenged the inclusion of members of the political party and family members in the Board of Trustees of the government trust, ‘Balasaheb Thackeray Rashtriya Smarak Samiti’, set up to carry out work for the memorial.
The high court said in its order that it does not find any arbitrariness in the government’s decision to choose three members of the Shiv Sena party and two members of the family of Thackeray to be part of the Board of Trustees.(PTI)
