The historic ground is the venue of the Shiv Sena's annual Dussehra rally, apart from political rallies of other parties.
Loudspeakers will now be history at Shivaji Park, to the delight of the predominantly Marathi-speaking residents in the locality.
Finally after six years of battling the frequent noise and din from political and other rallies, the Bombay high court ruling on Wednesday was music to the ears of the Shivaji Park residents.
But for three days — Maharashtra Day (May 1), Republic Day (January 26) and Mahaparinirvan Diwas (December 6) — the court has, in an interim order, said the park vicinity would be a silence zone. The high court has however given liberty to the government to consider granting relaxation on other days which could be of importance.
“I feel elated that the provisions of law and rules have been interpreted correctly by the HC and therefore thought it fit to declare Shivaji Park as Silence Zone,” said Ashok Ravat, member, Shivaji Park ALM, and one of the petitioners to the public interest litigation.
The residents’ patience with the loudspeaker din and noise ran out somewhere in 2004, and they began corresponding with various civic authorities including the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) to stop non-sporting activities at the park grounds.
“Complaints to BMC and the police did not yield any result. Ultimately, following a Bombay high court order on noise pollution, the government came out with a resolution dated April 21, 2009, saying all 100-m radius around educational institutions, courts, hospitals and clinics should be declared silence zones,” said Ravat.
“We pointed this to BMC again, and also requested Maharashtra Pollution Control Board (MPCB) to interpret the law correctly and inform BMC accordingly. They did inform that Shivaji Park ground and locality was a silence zone, but BMC didn’t act on it. It was then in 2009 that we filed a PIL,” said Ravat.
In his affidavit, municipal commissioner Swadheen Kshatriya had said: “Considering the huge area of Shivaji Park, where every alternate building has a private primary nursery school… it is almost impracticable to declare 100 m around educational institutions and religious places as silence zones.”
Representing the BMC, senior counsel KK Singhvi said, “Nursery is not a school. It is a place where children come and play with toys.”
The court refused to buy the argument. “We are of the opinion that Shivaji Park falls within the silence zone norms and consider that police authorities cannot issue licences for use of loudspeakers in the area,” remarked the judges.
The BMC has declared 51 areas as silence zones, which includes areas around 47 educational institutions and four hospitals in 24 municipal wards of the city.
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