The Hindu : National : Court nod for development of Mumbai textile mills' properties

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Wednesday, Mar 08, 2006

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National

Court nod for development of Mumbai textile mills' properties

Legal Correspondent

SC sets aside Bombay High Court order against project

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Tuesday set aside a Bombay High Court judgment scrapping the Rs. 20,000-crore project to develop lands belonging to 58 sick textile mills, including the mills belonging to the National Textile Corporation in Mumbai.

A Bench of Justice S.B. Sinha and Justice P.P. Naolekar allowing a batch of appeals filed by the Bombay Dyeing and Manufacturing Company Limited, NTC and other mills against the High Court order, upheld its interim arrangement permitting the NTC to sell its five mills and allowing development activities. The Bench held that the proposed developmental plan was in conformity with the BIFR scheme and apex court orders.

The High Court had held that the five NTC mills — Apollo, Mumbai, Elphinstone Mill number 3, Jupiter and Kohinoor — were sold without complying with the conditions laid down by the Board for Industrial and Financial Reconstruction (BIFR). For the other mills, the High Court, while interpreting the amended Development Control Rules 58 framed by the Maharashtra Government, had held that the sale of the mills land would come under the ambit of the earlier Development Control Rules which stipulated that one-third of the saleable mills land would be earmarked for open space, one-third for the government to set up low-cost housing and the rest for the mill owners.

In its 188-page judgment, the Bench said that the changes made by the Maharashtra Government in the Development Control (DC) Rules for the development of the mill lands were constitutionally valid. It was of the view that the writ petition filed in the High Court by the Bombay Environmental Action Group, challenging the development scheme should have been dismissed on grounds of delay.

It rejected the contention that the development works on the mill lands violated the July 7, 2004 Government Notification as none of them had obtained clearance from the Ministry of Environment and Forests. The Bench held that the environmental aspect and sustainable development had to go together.

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