The Gujarat high court on Monday imposed a fine of Rs 25,000 on the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) for demolishing toys and structures in one MUSKAAN Garden in the Vejalpur area, built by the city-based NGO Society for Promoting Rationality (SPRAT) to promote communal harmony between communities, in the wake of the 2002 genocide.
The park was constructed by SPRAT way back in 2004, to “demolish” the communal borders between Ahmedabad’s minority-dominated Juhapura area and an “exclusively” majority area, Vejalpur. The NGO developed the park called MUSKAAN with adventure games, popular science, a variety of educational, cultural, livelihood services and exhibitions.
According to SPRAT, some 13 years after the park was created, AMC issued an eviction notice in 2017. The NGO asked for a timeline for vacating the land, however, in February 2020, AMC sealed the plot and immediately after the second wave of Covid-19 pandemic, it bull-dozed the structures on June 4 and evicted the trust from the plot, TOI reported.
The HC judgement delivered by Justice Biren Vaishnav states that AMC’s actions was “unfair and unwarranted.”
Praising the NGO’s work, the court asked AMC to consider reallotting the park to SPRAT under public private partnership (PPP) and imposed a cost of Rs 25,000 on AMC. The court also asked the NGO to approach the appropriate court for seeking damages over the corporation’s action.
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