The division bench of Justice GS Kulkarni and Justice Neela Gokhale, while looking at pictures presented before it, said, “There’s filth, dirt, on the public streets. If your commissioner isn’t aware, we can provide pictures of the entire city. If your ward officer isn’t functioning, we will issue contempt action against you. It’s a pathetic situation

Published on: Sep 11, 2026, 07:51:30 IST

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MUMBAI: Stating that the civic body’s assurances on cleanliness had only remained “on paper”, the Bombay high court on Thursday warned the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) of contempt action against its ward officers if they failed to tackle the city’s persisting garbage and littering problem.

The division bench of Justice GS Kulkarni and Justice Neela Gokhale, while looking at pictures presented before it, said, “There’s filth, dirt, on the public streets. If your commissioner isn’t aware, we can provide pictures of the entire city. If your ward officer isn’t functioning, we will issue contempt action against you. It’s a pathetic situation.”

It also directed the BMC to file an affidavit within 10 days, naming every ward officer and their subordinates responsible for maintaining cleanliness and hygiene in the city. If complaints continued, the court said it would fix accountability on the officers.

“You have only 26 words. What’s the difficulty? We want you to spend some time and take a ride up to Dahisar. There is no sense of public hygiene. If people are not going to mend their behaviour of littering on public streets, it’s a very serious situation,” the bench remarked, while directing the civic bodies to launch a mechanism to initiate prosecution against citizens indulging in illegal dumping and, with police assistance, recover maximum fines.

The court stressed that merely imposing a fine of ₹500 on those who litter on public streets will not suffice. Referring to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call for local bodies to engage social media influencers to advertise such issues, the court suggested, “Why don’t you engage such influencers to encourage citizens not to throw garbage on the streets and not to litter?”

The court emphasised that stringent implementation of rules is important as citizens continued to dump garbage wherever they find open spaces. “There’s a mental block with the citizens. Wherever you see open spaces, you dump garbage there. We have the best of the laws but when it comes to enforcement, it’s a problem”, the bench remarked.

Citing Singapore as an example of strict enforcement against littering, the court said that Mumbai needs to follow the same mechanism by imposing heavy fines. “We have permitted you to take recourse to even launching prosecution but you’re only interested in collecting fines”, it said, while directing the BMC to “keep its house in order”.

The petitions, filed by residents of the eastern suburbs, nonprofit Vanashakti and others, have challenged the continued dumping of municipal solid waste at the Kanjurmarg landfill. They have also raised concerns over the persistent odour emanating from the facility, claiming it spreads across Kanjurmarg, Bhandup, Vikhroli and Mulund, particularly at night.

“We are planning one visit to the dumping site again. We’ll see what are the improvements”, the court said, while posting the matter for further hearing on September 7.

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