The High Court of Karnataka on Tuesday dismissed a PIL petition which had questioned the Mysuru City Corporation’s (MCC) decision to demolish the dilapidated 137-year-old Davaraja Market building and construct a new building in its place.
Taking note of the fact that two heritage committees, comprising experts, had already given their opinion for the demolition of the dilapidated building, the court said it cannot sit over the views of the panels comprising experts considering the imminent danger from the old structure.
The court also noted that some portions of the old market building had collapsed twice, once when the restoration works were under way.
A Division Bench comprising Chief Justice Prasanna B. Varale and Justice M.G.S. Kamal passed the order while dismissing the petition filed in 2020 by D. Shrijay Devaraj Urs and others, who had initially questioned the 2019 resolution passed by the MCC to demolish the market building and construct a new one.
Initially, the court in December 2020 had restrained the MCC from implementing its December 10, 2019 resolution to construct a new structure by demolishing the old building based on the report given by a panel of experts, the legality of which was questioned by the petitioner.
Subsequently, the MCC constituted a heritage conservation committee, which too in its meeting held in April 2022 opined that the dilapidated heritage structure had to be demolished and a new building could be constructed with the same heritage architectural style, and the petitioners had questioned the decision of the heritage conservation committee.
The court did not find any reason to interfere with the decision of the committee while rejecting the petitioner’s contention that the structural engineer present in the committee did not possess the required specialisation in structural engineering as the court noted from the record that he was a retired expert who had secured a master’s degree in structural engineering from one of the Indian Institutes of Technology.
