Summary:
Petitioners Vinod Thorat and Kailas Dinkar Deshmukh, residents of Nashik, approached the high court challenging the civic body’s decision to issue notices of demolition to 530 unauthorised religious structures in August this year. The Bombay High Court on Monday said that the Nashik Municipal Corporation is free to take action against unauthorised religious structures erected after September 2009, but only after hearing the affected parties. However, before taking such action, the corporation will have to abide by the procedure as laid down in the GR.” Following directions from the Supreme Court, the state government had came out with the policy to regularise unauthorised religious shrines by issuing GR. According to the resolution, a committee has been constituted to finalise the list of unauthorised religious structures within a period of three months from the date of issuance of the said GR..