The civic agency, represented by senior lawyer and former Union Law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, contended that the court should disband the committee and the commissioners. “When MCD is already there, what is the need of a parallel body like the monitoring committee? Prasad argued before the Bench comprising Justices A K Sikri and Rekha Sharma.

Hinting at the Supreme Court’s December 6 verdict, in which the Delhi High Court hearings on MCD’s demolition drive was listed as one of the instances of “judicial overreach”, Prasad said the apex court had been long advocating a “healthy respect for each organ of the government”. He said: “There is a clear demarcation of powers between the executive and the judiciary. This separation of powers has to be respected.”

He submitted that if the Parliament itself cannot interfere with the divide in turf between the executive and the judiciary, how can the courts “whittle down the concept of separation of powers in the guise of a judicial order”?

“The creation of a parallel power with the monitoring committee and the commissioners cannot be jusitified even if, admittedly, the MCD is not functioning properly.”

To drive his point home, the senior counsel gave several instances: “If AIIMS is not functioning properly due to a tiff between the director and the Health minister, should a monitoring panel be formed to check on the running of the hospital?

“If planes are not flying on time, should a monitoring panel be brought in.... Or if (the) eastern part of the country remains poor, should a committee be formed to monitor the annual budget?”

Justice Sikri pointed out that the matter would not have reached the courts if MCD had done its job. “Consider this perspective,” the Bench observed, “a person files a PIL in court saying an illegal building is coming up in the city. MCD comes later on and says it has already been demolished. We come to know that the MCD affidavit was fake. So, in the circumstance, are we wrong in employing a court commissioner to inspect the building site?

“Does it become an intervention into MCD’s powers?”