Mumbai: The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation's commissioner cannot draw her salary until a plot in Borivali is cleared of encroachments. The Supreme Court said so on Tuesday, issuing a contempt notice to Ashwini Bhide and finding her prima facie guilty of wilfully disobeying two earlier deadlines.
A bench of Chief Justice of India Surya Kant, Justice Joymalya Bagchi and Justice V. Mohana rejected the corporation's request for more time to pass eviction orders against the occupants of land earmarked for a BEST bus stand. It imposed costs of Rs 5 lakh on the civic body and restrained the BMC and the Maharashtra government from releasing the commissioner's salary until its directions are complied with.
The court was dealing with its own orders of November 13, 2025 and July 28, 2026, both of which set out time-bound steps for removing the encroachments. The bench said it was prima facie satisfied that the commissioner had committed a wilful breach of those directions. During the hearing, it indicated that jail was an option it was willing to use if the land was still not cleared, according to accounts of the proceedings.
By Wednesday the corporation had swung into action, with teams moving against illegal structures at the site — the outcome the court had been asking for across two orders and more than a year.
The case turns on a piece of public land reserved for a bus stand, the kind of plot that disappears quietly in a crowded city and is rarely recovered. Borivali's bus terminal serves lakhs of commuters on the western line, and a bus stand that cannot be built because a patch of land is occupied has a cost that shows up in crowding and in routes that cannot be started.
The court's order freezes a salary but does not name the officials who actually failed to act. Nor does it set a fresh date for compliance, or say what happens to the occupants once eviction begins.
For the BMC, the immediate problem is procedural and public at once: a demolition drive carried out under a contempt notice, with its own chief's pay on the line. What the court wants next is a report that the plot is clear.