Hearing in Mumbai textile mills cases starts

The Supreme Court today began hearing the appeals of Mumbai's textile mills even as Bombay Dyeing counsel Ram Jethmalani said the company would not go ahead with further construction without getting the required clearances.

A Bench, comprising Justice S B Sinha and Justice PP Naolekar, gave three days to private mills, the National Textile Corporation (NTC) and the Bombay Environmental Action Group to present their cases. Last month, the Supreme Court had declined to stay a Bombay High Court order, which had left the city's real estate industry in a turmoil.

The high court had also put hurdles in NTC's plans to sell five of its mills, worth about Rs 5,500 crore, to private developers. It had further restrained various developers, who were in various stages of building glitzy shopping complexes, from going ahead.

The high court did all this by striking down the 2001 amendment to the Development Control Rule "" DC Rule 58"" which allowed mill owners to exclude the 'already developed' land from the land to be made available to the state.

The court held that whenever a mill land is sold, one-third of it should be reserved for open space and one-third for low cost housing by the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority. Mill owners could retain the remaining one third for their commercial purposes.

The decision was taken on a petition by the Bombay Environmental Action Group that accused the state government of favouring mill owners while amending development rules. It insisted that the mill owners should be asked to give 67 per cent of the land they occupied to the metropolis for developing green lungs and low-cost housing.