Over six thousand court cases filed against TMC in 13 years

THANE: There has been a steady rise in the number of court cases against the Thane Municipal Corporation (TMC) over the last decade with signs that more and more petty disputes against the civic body are reaching the judiciary.
This is concerning even as there has been a decline in the disposal rate of the cases filed against TMC in the local court, high court and the Supreme Court.
Legal data from the last 13 years suggests that a total of 6,452 cases were filed against the civic body so far. But while 340 cases were filed in 2001, the count kept rising over the years, reaching 533 in 2007, 610 in 2010 and 778 in 2012. In 2013, 417 odd cases were filed for various disputes relating to illegal construction, property, land transfer, etc.
Corresponding data for the disposal rate has been hovering at roughly 50%, which simply means nearly half of the cases every year were disposed. But this, too, has seen a decline in the past five years.
Last year only 77 of the 417 cases were set aside. In 2012, 209 of the 778 filed were disposed and just 268 from the 690 filed in 2011 were disposed. So far, only 2,817 cases have been disposed leaving a pending backlog of 3,635 yet to be adjudicated upon.
Civic officials said most of the cases are related to property matter, illegal construction, developers challenging TMC orders for violation of rules and floor space index (FSI) and encroachment.
There have been only a handful of cases in the consumer courts against anomalies in civic services. "In the past 10 years, only two individuals have taken on the corporation on account of poor civic services. Most of the other cases have been of petty nature," said a senior civic official from the TMC legal department.
The low disposal rate is to be partly blamed on the poor performance of the civic legal cell, which is not only short staffed but gets step-motherly treatment when it comes to distribution of funds. Only a couple of crores are allotted each year to make up for the legal fee of the team and documentation process. There have been several instances in the recent past when important court cases have gone against the corporation because of poor preparation.
"We have the best hands available but what is lacking is the encouragement and boost from the TMC. Once a court case goes against the civic body, it sets a trend in a way that it encourages many more to challenge the TMC in the courts," said an official.
In a recent case, the high court reprimanded the corporation for holding back extra FSI to Lodha builders, and later directed the TMC to allow transfer of development rights (TDR) to the developer for construction carried out on a road set-back area. This was the first case of its kind and opened the floodgates for the rest to follow.
In the last six months, five other developers have gone to court and won rights to get TDR for construction over road set-back, causing losses to the civic exchequer.