Explain legal validity of fines for not wearing masks: HC to BMC

A division bench of Chief Justice Dipankar Datta and Justice Madhav J Jamdar was hearing a PIL by activist Feroze Mithiborwala challenging the Standard Operating Procedures issued by the state government on March 1 extending its decision of permitting only “fully vaccinated” people to avail public transport and making masks mandatory.

The plea had also sought prosecution of former CM Uddhav Thackeray and other officials under IPC for allegedly misusing their power by mandating masks.

Advocate Nilesh Ojha for the petitioner referred to provisions of the Disaster Management Act, which stated the fine can be levied by the authorities only post-conviction and not before the same.

Senior Advocate SU Kamdar representing the state government submitted that the Supreme Court had said the vaccination and other mandates cannot be faulted with and only the civic bodies can answer about the issue of fines collected as the state had no role to play in it.

The court asked senior advocate Anil Sakhare for BMC to show under which provisions the civic body had collected fines from the citizens. After Sakhare sought time to respond, the bench posted further hearing in the matter after two weeks.