MUMBAI, Sept. 11 -- The Bombay High Court has dismissed a petition seeking the demolition of a house in Ulhasnagar whose construction had been approved by a town planner who was later subjected to disciplinary action, observing that the structure cannot be demolished merely because the officer who granted permission was penalised. A division bench of justices Bharati Dangre and Ashish Chavan, in a judgement delivered on Monday, said the structure could not be razed "merely because the person who granted permission has been subjected to disciplinary proceedings and some penalty has been imposed upon him, unless and until the corporation declares the structure to be particularly illegal". The court was hearing a petition filed by Viresh Mahindrarka seeking the demolition of a house owned by Rama Nikam. The Ulhasnagar Municipal Corporation (UMC) had issued a completion certificate for the house in 2009. Mahindrarka had challenged the regularisation of the structure, arguing that it violated the Regularisation of Unauthorised Developments in the City of Ulhasnagar (RUDCU) Act, 2006. The bench, however, found no merit in the argument that the regularisation was contrary to the 2006 law. The RUDCU Act was enacted to regularise unauthorised construction in Ulhasnagar. The judgement noted that unauthorised development had taken place on a large scale in the city, around 58 km from Mumbai, and that the law was intended to address such construction while minimising the hardship that would be caused to a large number of people if the structures were demolished. The petition also relied on proceedings against former town planner A P Gurgule, who was a respondent in Mahindrarka's petition. The High Court was told that, in a separate public interest litigation (PIL), it had in 2011 directed the state urban development department and the UMC to inquire into Gurgule's actions. He had allegedly granted 12 development permissions for illegal structures. Following the High Court's direction, Gurgule faced disciplinary action and a penalty. The judges, however, pointed out that the 2011 order had directed an inquiry into the town planner's actions, but had not directed the demolition of the 12 structures in question. The bench rejected the argument that the structures should therefore be demolished, observing that "the structures must be demolished because it was agreed that they were unauthorised." The bench further observed, "In any case, we find that down the line, in the year 2026, when much water has flown with the development plan also being revised and definitely, this regularised structure must have been taken into consideration and some other DP road must have been chalked out in the revised development plan." The High Court, therefore, was not convinced....