Bollywood Kangana Ranaut is making headlines for quite a few months. And, it's not for her stellar movies but her battle with the Maharashtra government and authorities. The latest party on the other end of her wrath is the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation after the body demolished her property. She filed a plea against the Municipal Corporation and has recently amended it to seek Rs 2 Crores as damages for the “illegal demolition” of property.
This was done as a result of her Bandra office being demolished in parts. This demolished property also included valuable items such as chandeliers and rare artwork. In addition to seeking hefty damage, the plea has also sought interim relief so that it could take appropriate steps to make the property “capable of use” after the sudden demolition.
The plea also highlighted the rejected reply from BMC’s office. The rejection was notified to Ranaut on September 9th, 2020 at around 10.30 Am. The plea stated that the police officers and BMC were, “already present outside the bungalow well before the time of final order of BMC, which can be proved by Ranaut’s tweet at 10.19 am on Wednesday”
The amendment came as no surprise. Her counsel, advocate Rizwan Siddique had previously informed the HC that a more refined amended plea would replace the rather hastily filed initial plea. After the amendment, the humble 29-page petition is now a rather bulky 92 pages.
While Ranaut seeks hefty damages, her petition also seeks the HC to declare that the September 9th demolition by HC as illegal and contrary to law. The petition also pleads the HC to quash the notice that was sent to her on September 7th, 2020.
Further, the petition stated that “The photograph clearly shows that the BMC officials along with police officers and with all the equipment as they were already ready to demolish the said Bungalow which shows that the BMC always had malafide intentions and ulterior motives to demolish the said Bungalow… actions by respondents were premeditated and vitiated by malice.”
The Mumbai High Court will the matter by next week, i.e. September 22nd, 2020. Until the final hearing, the HC has continued to stay the demolition.
The BMC needs to prove that Kangana’s property was unauthorized. Failure to comply would lead to the payment of damages.
Ranaut was confident that was no unauthorized or illegal construction in her property. In one of her tweets, she writes, “Bullywood watch now - this is what Fascism looks like #DeathOfDemocracy”
