SC lets Siddhivinayak wall stand

The crash wall around the Siddhivinayak temple got protection from the Supreme Court (SC) on Monday. The SC restrained the BMC from demolishing the wall for three months. The SC permitted the wall to stand even after the interim relief period granted by the Bombay High Court ends on November 30. The SC bench reverted the case to the Bombay High court to be disposed of within three months.

Last month the Bombay High court had ordered the ‘illegally’ built wall around the temple to be demolished but granted an interim relief till November 30 to the temple trust to move the SC. The high court had held that the construction of the permanent RCC wall was out of the purview of any law and it was therefore ‘illegal’.

The Siddhivinayak temple trust built the wall in November 2005 citing security reasons after attacks on religious places like the Akshardham temple in Gandhinagar and the Sankatmochan temple in Varanasi. A Public Interest Litigation, filed by Vinod Desai and nine other residents of housing societies around the temple, alleged that the traffic situation in the area had worsened after the wall was built.

Sangaraj Rupawate who appeared for the petitioners in the Bombay High Court said, “I am sure there will be attempts to regularise that wall as the Bombay High Court may issue some hard hitting orders again. For now, we just hope that the petition takes not more than a month to be
disposed of.”