According to the Mahabaleshwar Hill Station Municipal Council's building bye-laws, a basement can be used, without being counted as a separate floor, if it is partly or fully below ground level and is used only for storage, parking or air-conditioning plants.

The Bombay Environmental Action Group (BEAG), a Mumbai-based voluntary organisation, which filed a public interest writ petition in the HC against the spate of unauthorised constructions in the Mahabaleshwar-Panchgani region and the degradation of forest wealth there, has pointed out that in several cases, particularly in downtown Mahabaleshwar, the basement was used as a restaurant.

This was confirmed by a HC committee under the chairmanship of Pune Divisional Commissioner Arun Bhatia. The Municipal Council later served notices on building owners fordefault.

In the course of hearing the writ on September 15, a division bench comprising Chief Justice M B Shah and Justice Y S Jagirdar directed the Municipal Council not to count the basement as a separate storey if owners of the buildings filed undertakings before the court and also the municipal council on or before September 30 that the basements would be used only as parking space, storage or air-conditioning plant rooms, and that it ``would not be used for any other purpose''.

The court directed that, ``no further action be taken for violation of the bye-laws'' if such an undertaking is filed before September 30. The petitioner also pointed out cases of violation of building height restrictions. In Mahabaleshwar, building height is restricted to nine metres, except in cases of buildings for lower and middle-income groups, where it can go upto 11 metres with the State Government's approval.

The HC directed that violation of height could be condoned by the civic body ``in its discretion'' for one ortwo feet by levying a penalty of Rs 1,000 to Rs 25,000. But this will not be ``treated as a licence to grant permission to violate the height limit''. Building owners have to apply for condonation on or before September 30.

The HC also ruled that a building's height would be measured, ``by taking the average height of four corners of the plot''. In a hill station like Mahabaleshwar, the ground level at one side of the building is not necessarily the same at the other.

The petitioners had argued that this difference in ground levels was misused by building owners who measured the building height from the frontal ground level and added a floor by taking advantage of the drop in ground level at the back. Thus, with the HC ruling, height will be the average of levels at the four corners of the plot.