SC allows Maharashtra to set up stage at Girgaum Chowpatty for Make in India event

MUMBAI: The state can go ahead and start its preparations for its Maharashtra Night as part of the Make in India week on February 14 at Girgaum Chowpatty. The Supreme Court granted permission to the state government to get the work started from Wednesday, staying the refusal by Bombay high court order.
The Maharashtra government, not taking no for an answer, had on Monday moved the Supreme Court to challenge refusal by the HC bench headed by Justices Abhay Oka.The HC did not allow a cultural event for the ‘Make in India Week’ at Girgaum chowpatty. "The HC resorted to a pedantic view by observing that there was no application made by the State to modify an order adopting (decade-old) guidelines," said the state to the SC in its plea special leave petition (SLP) to appeal against the order.
The SLP filed through state lawyer Nishant Katneshwarkar in delhi, said, what is "pertinent" is that the state doesn’t want to modify guidelines issued earlier but mere permission to hold a Maharashtra Night at the beach side, for "just four hours".
On Wednesday, the SC issued notice to other parties, and granted interim relief by permitting the event and the pre-event work to take place at the beach. The SC granted the state's plea for "permission to conduct 'Maharashtra Night Event' on February 14, at Girgaum Chowpatty, Mumbai under the Chairmanship of chief minister Devendra Fadnavis and to permit use of the open space at the beach till February 15 to set up a stage there."
The matter has now been posted after four week.
"The HC is wrong to hold that the state, which had consented to a 2001 order –that regulates use of the beach and its beautification—could not now seek permission to hold an event on a large part of the public space," the SLP said.
The state advocate general S G Aney had argued in the HC that the Make in India event was no less important that a golden jubilee event of Maharshtra Day in 2010 which the court had permitted there.
"The function is for the public to celebrate Mumbai," he had said and the state said Chowpatty was zeroed in as the best location to showcase the city as the nation’s financial capital.
The state can start setting up the stage. It wanted to do the stage work from February 1 to February 15 and was willing to undertake that public would continue to have access at all regular times, except on the event date on February 14 for those four hours, between 6pm to 10pm, for security reasons.
In 2005, the HC had accepted guidelines set out by a court-appointed committee in a public interest litigation. The upshot of the norms was that barring few festivals, such as Ganesh and Durga immersions, Ram Leela, Krishna Leela and Christmas celebrations, no other events including political ones could take place on the beach.