HC refuses plea to remove Dhondo Keshav Karve’s statue in Pune

The bench refused to grant relief and said the “statue cannot be hidden behind the hoarding only because the petitioner wanted an income from the permission granted to advertiser” and that the move would “defeat the entire purpose of the statute”. The Court also said that the petitioner failed to show that installation of statues by the civic body is forbidden.

A division bench of Justice Gautam S Patel and Justice Kamal R Khata on October 17 passed an order in a plea by Indumati Borse (90) filed through her power of attorney holder Jitendra Borse. The petitioner owns land in Kothrud area, of which 1500 square metres was taken over by PMC for the purpose of road widening. Borse had given licence to a firm called ‘Ketki Ads’ to erect a display hoarding, whose supporting structure is on Borse’s land.

PMC in its reply submitted that initially, in 2006, the statue was installed at the centre of the junction of 120-feet-wide Karve Road and 100-feet-wide DP Road, and a circular traffic island was built around it. In 2014, to ease traffic flow, the statue was shifted from the road’s central circle to a triangular portion of the land which was acquired by PMC from Borse’s property.

It was subsequently relocated twice to different locations. Later, based on the traffic department’s opinion, the peripatetic statue was brought back to its original place on the acquired triangular portion. PMC said that due to the said relocation, traffic movement had eased and it enabled a sufficient turning radius for larger vehicles.
The civic body submitted that permission granted to Ketki Ads to put up hoardings was cancelled, after which the firm moved Pune civil court, which has not passed any ‘positive’ order directing re-issuance of license
Advocate Chandana Salgaocar for Borse argued that erection or installation of statues is not part of statutory municipal functions.

However, the bench noted that government’s business concerns a “wide range of activity” and “every government also must deal, necessarily, with public and popular sentiment and the emotive needs or desires, expectations and demands of citizens.”

It noted that the portion of petitioner’s land where statute has been put up was validly acquired and there was no challenge to the acquisition. “It is not for the petitioner to dictate what the public purpose should be,” the bench noted.