A plea has been filed in the Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court requesting to stay the merger of Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) and Nagpur Improvement Trust (NIT). The court was urged to stay the transfer of the plan, property and funds of Nagpur Improvement Act to NMC and Nagpur Metropolitan Region Development Authority. Also, the validity of the notification abolishing the NIT has also been challenged through the application, which has been filed by Satyavrat Dutta.
Public interest litigation filed by Dutta against government’s move to abolish NIT is pending in the High Court. The petitioner said, in an order issued by the HC in this regard on 13 June 2018, transfer of authority. Despite this, a notification has been issued to merge NIT with NMC, which was contempt of High Court. On Friday, a bench of Justice Ravi Deshpande and Justice Vinay Joshi heard the plea. The court has fixed the next hearing on September 3.
Dutta says that NIT has an independent budget. Till now, the state government has taken funds from NIT for various projects. This amount has not been refunded. In the meeting held on October 20, 2018, it was decided to transfer the miscellaneous project of NIT and fund of Rs 351.73 crore to Nagpur Metropolitan Regional Development Authority. On 23 May 2016, Rs 100 crore was sanctioned from NIT fund for regularizing unauthorized layouts. A share of Rs 113.35 crore was taken from NIT for the Amrit scheme. All this is being done to abolish the NIT. The notification has been issued on 27 August and is illegal. Dutta has demanded to cancel it.
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