JUDGMENT :

GS Patel J.

1. Rule. There are Affidavits in Reply. Rule returnable forthwith.

2. This Petition reflects the kind of bureaucratic morass that might well have been an inspiration for Franz Kafka.

3. There is a road. Like many roads in Mumbai, it is narrower than it should be. The Municipal Corporation grants permission for redevelopment of a tall structure, one large enough to re-accommodate over a hundred tenants. It does so knowing that the road is not as wide as it should be. All 110 tenants vacate their homes. Construction commences. It comes up to the seventh floor. This is not sufficient to accommodate all the tenants. Nor is it the original proposal, which was for much more built up space. But it is only now that some functionary in the Ward Office awakens to the road width. He refuses permission to build higher. He says, astonishingly, that the road ‘is too narrow’. But the road is what it always was. It is not a living thing. It has neither expanded nor contracted since the time the original permission was sought and granted.

4. Implicit in this refusal is that the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (“MCGM”) is a complete stranger to its own roads and their width