Seventy-four-year-old activist lawyer Khushru Zaiwalla is at it again. This time he has filed a public interest litigation (PIL) before the Bombay High Court (BHC) claiming that the Dharmaday Aayukt building at Worli which houses the Charity Commissioner’s (CC) office has "structural instability and (is a) major fire risk,” states The Times of India (ToI) of April 29, 2019.
In his PIL Zaiwalla "cited a 38-page structural audit report by the structural engineering department of Veermata Jijabai Technological Institute (previously Victoria Jubilee Technical Institute), Bombay, which termed the four-storeyed building ‘dilapidated,’ a fire trap and unsafe for public use,” stated the ToI report. He has pleaded that the CC’s office should be shifted till the building is reconstructed.
Dharmaday Aayukt building (above) Photo: Justdial;
above right: Khushru Zaiwalla: litigating for safety
"There is no proper fire escape route available and shockingly all windows have grills on the outside, making timely rescue efforts impossible in case of a fire,” the write-up quotes Zaiwalla as stating.
Zaiwalla is a regular visitor to the building having filed several applications in the CC’s office, including one to stop The B. D. Petit Parsee General Hospital (PGH)-Shroff-Medanta proposal earlier this year. The deal to develop a new cosmopolitan hospital from whose earnings PGH would be subsidized was scuttled in March end.