The Bombay High Court on Friday rapped the Airport Authority of India, (AAI) for not ensuring safety of air passengers and leaving it to the court for regulating the height of construction around the Mumbai Airport. 

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A division bench of Justice S C Dharmadhikari and Justice Bharati Dangre said "Do not leave it to us. If you do so, then we will take away your authority to sanction." The observation was made while hearing an application filed by MMRDA seeking no objection certificate for constructing an overhead wire, for the upcoming Metro 2-B project. 

Advocate S B Talekar appearing for the authority argued that AAI has given no objection certificate, subject to permission from the court, on March 23. He said only 11 centimeters of height is above permissible limits. To which the bench said "From the Juhu airport, every few seconds private planes, helicopters take off and land. Several workers of ONGC go from there, already the infrastructure is weak, we are taking risk as we have been taking. We (Court) will not be party to any relaxation of norms. Let the authority take it, we don't want wish to be party to all this."

On Thursday, a private plane had crashed into Ghatkopar area killing five people and injuring two. The bench referring to the incident said "This is the airport where the accident plane had taken off yesterday. We have deaths of public officials. The permission you seek is in the funnel area of the airport. The AAI has to take responsibility." The court has now posted the matter for further hearing after a week and asked the authority to file reply.