HC raps CCP for evicting 2 from fish mkt building

Panaji: The high court of Bombay at Goa on Thursday pulled up the Corporation of the City of Panaji (CCP) for sealing the fish market building and displacing two occupants of the higher floors who had status quo orders in their favour from a lower court.
During the hearing, senior advocate J E Coelho Pereira, representing CCP, told the HC that the building was in a dangerous state and that continuous rain posed a threat to its stability.Based on a report from the talathi, it sealed the building, he said. However, the court said CCP should have gone to the court and sought vacation of the court order first.
The division bench, comprising chief justice of the Bombay high court Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya and Justice M S Karnik, asked CCP who gave it the authority to defy orders passed by a competent court.
The bench said it understood the need to demolish the building, but asked what happened to the rule of law.
“This erodes the rule of law,” the bench stated.
Besides these two occupants, several meat vendors operating on the ground floor of the building knocked on the HC’s doors seeking rehabilitation after CCP sealed the building last month.
Over the past few hearings, the court has been asking CCP to find space for the meat vendors in the market, but CCP has been maintaining that the meat vendors are not their tenants and that there is no space in the market to rehabilitate them. It also said it would have to provide them with shops as they require electricity connections, and that it doesn’t have any shops to give them
During the last hearing, CCP told the HC it is relocating vendors who sell fish below the same building.
The HC will hear the matter again on Friday.