India, Aug. 26 -- The Bombay High Court has directed municipal corporations and other planning authorities across Maharashtra to halt work at construction sites if they are found violating the newly mandated safety norms for under-construction high-rise buildings. The court also directed the civic bodies to initiate immediate civil and criminal action by treating the violations as breaches of building permissions.

The division bench of justice Girish Kulkarni and justice Arif Doctor, in an order passed on Friday, said, "any breach of such measures or requirements in the report of the expert committee, shall be held to be violation of the building permission, and shall entail consequences of breach of such development permission, liable f...