HC permits govt. to use of Balabrooie guest house building to set up Constitutional Club

Permission was given after govt.’s assurance that no trees would be cut and no structural change would be made to the 172-year-old building

The High Court of Karnataka on Tuesday permitted the State government to use Balabrooie guest house to set up the proposed Constitutional Club, a recreational facility for the legislators, after the government gave an undertaking to the court that neither any structural changes would be made to the 172-year-old building nor any trees in the premises would cut or damaged.

A Division Bench comprising Chief Justice Prasanna B. Varale and Justice Ashok S. Kinagi passed the order while modifying the interim order passed on October 7, 2021, in which the court had directed the authorities to maintain the status quo on the nature of use of Balabrooie guest house. Also, the court had earlier restrained the government from handing over the guest house to any organisation felling or trimming trees in and around the guest house premises without prior permission of the court.

However, the government on Tuesday, filed an application before the HC seeking modification of the earlier interim order to permit it to carry out the maintenance works of the building and to make only aesthetic changes to the interiors for using the building for Constitutional Club instead of a guest house.

The government also made it clear to the court that only the interior aesthetic changes would be carried without making any structural changes to either the interiors or the exteriors of the existing building.

Accepting the government’s undertaking, the Bench made it clear that no trees could be either cut or damaged in the premises and no structural change to the building would be permitted.

The court on October 2021 had passed the interim order an interlocutory application filed by Dattatraya T. Devare in a PIL filed by himself and the Bangalore Environmental Trust in 2018 on non-implementation of the Karnataka Preservation of Trees Act, 1976.

The petitioners had expressed apprehension about possibility of cutting several heritage trees, aged more than 100 years, existing on the guest house campus if the premises were converted into a club by taking up construction activities for housing the proposed club.