The MCGM used the 90x20 ft hoarding in suburban Bandra for advertisement of the Magnetic Maharashtra Convergence conclave, but it turned out that for the last several years, the civic body had been asking the owners of the hoarding to remove it on the ground it was illegal and exceeded the maximum 40x40 ft size permitted by it.
In a hearing on Thursday, Justice Gautam Patel, who was presiding over a petition filed by the owner of the hoarding seeking relief, questioned how the civic body had used the hoarding for displaying a government ad when it had been claiming that the hoarding was illegal.
"Till recently the hoardings were blank. On February 6, the petitioner was among several persons who received a notice from the MCGM directing the petitioner to put up on these hoardings what is euphemistically called a civic message," Justice Patel said.
"That expression does violence to the language, for what the petitioner was asked to put up by the MCGM was nothing but a political poster featuring the Hon'ble Chief Minister and the Hon'ble Prime Minister in advance of the Magnetic Maharashtra Convergence 2018," he said.
Also Read
Justice Patel, however, termed this submission as contradictory.
"This is a contradiction. How can the MCGM make use of hoardings that it itself says are non-conforming with its policy and are without a licence.
"It cannot say that a citizen may not use his hoarding for legitimate commercial purposes because it violates some requirement, rule, specification or guideline, and at the same time say, for what are obviously political purposes, that very non-conforming hoarding should be used, despite being unlicensed and non-conforming, because the state government through one of its entities says so," Justice Patel said.
He said the MCGM using an illegal hoarding for its own purposes would either mean that the hoarding was not illegal, or, that the state and the civic body were together permitting or perpetrating an illegality.
"Therefore, in all future matters, the MCGM is not entitled to demand the display of any messages, civic or otherwise, on hoardings other than those that have a valid, existing license," Justice Patel said.
He directed the civic body to permit the petitioner the use of his hoarding since he had already paid the corporation fees for the same for an entire year and had undertaken to reduce its size to meet with its rules.
Disclaimer: No Business Standard Journalist was involved in creation of this content