Bombay Dyeing loses mill land battle in SC

Mumbai: In a setback to Bombay Dyeing, the Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a Bombay high court order that had asked the textile major to hand over one-third of its mill land each at Naigaum and Lower Parel to the BMC and Mhada, respectively, for development of open spaces, transit camp accommodation and houses for mill workers. 

    A bench of Justices R M Lodha and A R Dave dismissed a special leave petition filed by Bombay Dyeing against the HC's May 2012 order. The company will now have to hand over the land by August 21. 
    Mhada and the BMC will get around 65,000 sq ft of land, earmarked under the mill land redevelopment scheme, in the city's prime locations. Activists and the state have been fighting to ensure erstwhile mill lands benefit the public and are not used only to house private residential and commercial towers.A division bench of Chief Justice Mohit Shah and Justice Roshan Dalvi of the HC had dismissed petitionschallenging stopwork notices issued to Bombay Dyeing for its failure to hand over the land. 
    The textile company had approached the high court after the BMC issued a stopwork notice on March 26, 2010. The notice was issued following a direction from the monitoring committee, headed by Justice(Retd)BVChavan, that oversees redevelopment of city's mill lands. 
    The HC had given time for the company to go in appeal and it did. Its counsel Fali Nariman and Navroz Seervai had argued that the company was carrying out construction on its existing built-up land andthe question of handing over plots would come up only when it completed construction on 30% of the remaining plot. Mhada's lawyer G W Mattos opposed the argument int he HC, saying there was as no concept of built-up land under the rules.