Mumbai: On a stifling Wednesday afternoon, an Army guard parks his cycle outside an unusually tall building — unusual as it is the only high-rise structure on the stretch. He unlatches a five-layered tiffin box, opens a makeshift door of a makeshift compound wall and snaps it shut behind him.
The door has a small window carved within it for the guards to be able to speak with outsiders. Behind this heavy barricading stands a building that is among Mumbai’s most controversial properties — the Adarsh Cooperative Housing Society in South Mumbai’s sea-facing neighbourhood of Cuffe Parade.
The person held morally responsible for the controversy and chargesheeted by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), Ashok Chavan, lost his position as Maharashtra’s chief minister in 2010. He went on to fight multiple elections under the shadow of the scandal, and faced graft probes before politically rehabilitating himself in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in February this year. He is currently galvanising support for his new party on his home turf, Nanded, ahead of the Lok Sabha polls there on 26 April.
Chavan has moved on, calling the alleged scam a “political accident” that happened to him. But the 31-storey building, which has gone through a series of controversies involving the violation of construction and environment norms, languishes behind a large garbage bin of the Mumbai civic body like the leftovers of a lavish meal that turned out to be a bit too acerbic.
The only signs of life in the building are two Army sentries in its compound, stationed there to guard the structure and prevent it from being encroached. Meanwhile, the Adarsh society is embroiled in a long-drawn legal battle to get the building regularised and save it from being demolished.
“Three petitions against the Bombay High Court’s order directing the building to be demolished, and one petition against an order of the Maharashtra Coastal Zone Management Authority (MCZMA) denying post facto environment clearance to the building, are pending for final hearing in the Supreme Court. The matter is likely to be taken up for hearing sometime in July,” advocate Ravi Adsure, representing the society in the Supreme Court, told ThePrint.
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The Adarsh scandal
The Adarsh high-rise, which stands adjacent to the Backbay bus depot in Cuffe Parade, was completed in 2010 with a stilt, two podiums and 103 apartments. It has been alleged that politicians, civil servants as well as military officers had colluded to bend rules and get flats in the multi-storied building for themselves or their relatives at prices highly discounted from the market rate.
An inquiry commission set up by the Maharashtra government had, in 2011, observed that the Adarsh society was not set up exclusively for veterans of the 1999 Kargil War and their families, but had come into existence long before the war. It was found that land was first sought from the Maharashtra government for ‘Adarsh Cooperative Housing Society’ in 1994.
However, according to a chronology of events drawn up by the Union Ministry of Defence in its inquiry, the society had played up the role of the Army in the Kargil war in subsequent letters to the Maharashtra government, seeking permissions to build on the land. It had also agreed to accommodate 20 percent civilians after a discussion with Chavan when he was the Maharashtra revenue minister.
The Congress leadership asked Chavan to step down as Maharashtra CM in 2010 for approving additional construction area for the society, allegedly in exchange for two flats for relatives.
In 2013, an inquiry report by a commission set up by the Maharashtra government to probe the matter had highlighted that there were 25 illegal allotments, including 22 purchases made by proxy. The then state cabinet of the Congress and the undivided Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) had rejected the report.
The CBI, in 2012, filed chargesheets against 13 accused, including government officials, army officers, and one person from defence estates. The CBI accused Chavan of conspiracy and corruption. In 2014, a supplementary chargesheet was filed against 50 more accused for alleged benami transactions.
When the Congress-NCP government was in power in Maharashtra, the governor, K. Sankaranarayanan, had refused sanction to prosecute Chavan. However, after the government changed post the 2014 state polls, and the BJP’s Devendra Fadnavis was the CM, the CBI once again sought sanction from the governor to prosecute Chavan, which was granted in February 2016. But, Chavan challenged this in the Bombay High Court, which ruled in the former Nanded MP’s favour, saying CBI had failed to furnish fresh evidence.
Plea against demolition
In 2016, in an order dated 29 April, the Bombay High Court ordered the Union government to demolish the Adarsh building. It also directed the Centre and the Maharashtra government to start “appropriate civil and criminal proceedings against the concerned bureaucrats, ministers and politicians for committing various offences for acquiring the said plot as also misuse/abuse of powers”.
The Adarsh society appealed against the order in the Supreme Court, where the matter is still pending. The apex court did not pass any interim order, but directed the Centre to take possession of the building for as long as the petitions were pending. Accordingly, the Army took possession of the building in July 2016.
The Supreme Court also allowed the society to take possession of the society records that were in the building premises and remove furniture lying in a few apartments.
“The Supreme Court has also unfrozen the bank account of the society and allowed the society to access the account. Those directions still stand,” Adsure, the society’s advocate, said.
He, however, added that there had been no decision by any authority on the society memberships of the 25 allotments that the inquiry commission had said were illegal and the 22 purchases supposedly made through proxies.
“The Mumbai city collector has to take a call and the members have the right to appeal. However, since the case over the building’s demolition is pending, there has been no decision on whether to cancel the memberships. The thought process is that if the Supreme Court does decide in favour of demolition, there would be no point in debating over the membership to the society,” he said.
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Battle for a post-facto green nod
The Maharashtra Coastal Zone Management Authority (MCZMA) over various meetings in 2020 considered the Adarsh society’s proposal for an environmental clearance, as per Supreme Court’s directions in November 2019.
The Adarsh society was hoping for a post-facto environmental clearance in line with the amended Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) norms of 2018. In its meeting on 21 December 2020, the MCZMA noted that the Bombay High Court had already dealt with the matter, observing that the society had consumed Floor Space Index (FSI) of 2.932, as against the permissible FSI of 1.33. FSI is a ratio of the extent of permissible construction on a given plot in relation to its size.
The MCZMA further said that under the CRZ norms, 2018, only activities that are “otherwise permissible” can be considered for regularisation.
According to the minutes of the MCZMA meeting, the authority said that according to the Bombay High Court’s observations, “the entire construction carried out by the petitioners (Adarsh CHS) is unauthorised and illegal, and in total defiance of provisions of the Environment (Protection) Act and the Maharashtra Regional and Town Planning Act”.
The authority further said that since there is no interim order by the Supreme Court, the Bombay High Court order still stands, and that the MCZMA is duty-bound to abide by its findings and observations. Therefore, it was decided that the proposal could not be recommended for regularisation.
The Adarsh society has petitioned the Supreme Court against the MCZMA’s decision. The matter is still pending.
(Edited by Mannat Chugh)
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