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Pulling up the Municipal Corporation of Delhi for indiscriminately repairing the roads without any basic care and caution, the Delhi High Court has directed it to pay an amount of Rs 9 lakh as compensation to an octogenarian from West Azad Nagar whose home suffered waterlogging due to years of repair work, the adjoining road rose by about 2 and a half feet.
The division bench of Chief Justice Satish Chandra Sharma and Justice Subramonium Prasad rejected the MCD’s argument that since the colony was unplanned and was subsequently regularised, they have been repairing the roads on ‘as is where is basis’. “A Municipal Corporation constituted for the precise purpose of providing basic amenities to the citizens cannot shirk responsibility on the ground that the society was once unauthorised,” said the court.
The bench further said the MCD has woefully failed in discharging its duties “in as much as it has admittedly laid down roads one over the other thereby increasing the height of the roads which ought not to have been done”. The MCD has also not ensured that there are proper stormwater drains in the area so that the rainwater can be drained away, it added.
The court noted that the actions of the MCD apparently have compelled individuals, who did not have the financial capacity to raise the level of their homes, to sell them to builders. It said MCD needs to ensure that other societies which were unauthorised and have subsequently been regularised are provided with requisite sanitation facilities, functional drainage systems, roads and other infrastructural amenities.
“The MCD being such a body, cannot reasonably expect individuals to re-apply for sanction plans, and further build their houses from scratch. It should not be the prerogative of a few, with the requisite financial wherewithal, to enjoy amenities as basic as sanitation, functional drainage systems, and mindfully constructed roads,” said the court.
Criticising the MCD for citing lack of funds in the case, the court said, “A responsible Municipal Corporation consisted for the precise purpose of providing these basic public goods cannot shirk off its responsibility by citing financial constraints. Considering that it is evident that the MCD has been grossly negligent in its conduct, it is incumbent upon this Court to craft tools in order to do complete justice for the Appellant”.
The court was hearing a case filed by Leela Mathur who had first petitioned the court in 2010 for the reconstruction of the road and compensation for the damage caused to her belongings. Her grievance before the court was that during the monsoon, it is impossible to live in the house as rainwater enters it.
A single bench in February 2020 ordered the MCD to pay her a compensation of Rs 3 lakh and also hand over a pump to her to prevent waterlogging. She challenged the decision before the division bench seeking a cost of Rs 21 lakh, which was the revised cost of construction of her house. The MCD also challenged the decision.
Senior Advocate Akhil Sibal, who was appointed by the court to assist Mathur who otherwise appeared in person, told the court that he had visited her house personally and found that waterlogging had destroyed the woodwork of her house, ruined her material possessions and rendered it inhabitable. In response to an RTI application filed by Mathur, the erstwhile EDMC had admitted that it is supposed to maintain the level of roads as per the height of the previous road.
The court said she has undergone immense agony and anxiety for a prolonged period of time and finds it appropriate “to enhance the compensation awarded to Smt. Leela Mathur by a sum of Rs. 9,00,000/-, which would be roughly half the cost of reconstruction”.
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