Kamala Mills blaze: Mumbai lawyer pens letter to Devendra Fadnavis, demands removal of BMC chief Ajoy Mehta from inquiry

A Mumbai-based lawyer has written to Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis asking that BMC chief Ajoy Mehta be removed from the inquiry into the Kamala Mills blaze. Abha Singh, a former civil servant and an advocate practicing currently in the High Court of Judicature at Bombay, claimed Mehta’s  appointment ‘violates the principles of natural justice’ as Mehta himself gave permission to set up 18 restaurants in the same building at Kamala Mills. Mehta would be conducting a probe against himself were he to look in to the Kamala Mills matter, Singh claimed in her letter to Fadnavis. Singh attached the details of the approvals which Mehta gave for the food court at Kamala Mills and described how the approvals were illegal. Singh alleged Mehta closed his eyes to the violations being committed by the owners and waived the legally mandated rules. She requested that the order appointing Mehta as head of the Kamala Mills probe be cancelled and a judicial commission be set up to undertake an inquiry into the matter. She further asked that Mehta be suspended as “it would be unfair will be unfair to suspend the junior officers and not the commissioner who flouted the rules”. Congress MLA Nitesh Rane also pointed out that the day the permissions were given — 1 January, 2017, — the BMC Code of Conduct was in application. He questioned the urgency of giving out all the permissions on the same day. He alleged that there was a nexus of officers and middlemen making a profit from rampant construction in mill areas. Rane demanded a CBI inquiry and said he would take out a morcha on 15 January against the alleged irregularities in the functioning of the civil body. He asked all political parties to join him in the same.