I am trying to shutdown illegally running restaurants in a building in Maharashtra. These restaurants are being run in shops (gala) in the building.
They do not possess any permit from police, PMC, traffic police and municipal corporation. They have been using municipal water supplied to the building and therefore have duped the corporation of lakhs of rupees by not taking a separate water connection which costs much more. Still the municipal corporation is not making any effort to recover this sum. The drainage of these restaurants is conencted to the main building drainage and therefore gets chocked and overflows frequently. There are a lot of other problems too. sO we want these restaurants shut.
However, municipal corporation, FDA (Food and Drugs Administration), police are passing the buck to other departments saying that shutting down these restaurants is not in their jurisdiction. We do come across news reports saying that police have cracked down on various restaurants and have shut them down. Is it true that police have such authority even without court directions? We have letters from police saying that they have not issued any permits for these restaurants and they have been filing cases in courts against these restaurants. But I understand that maximum penalty for such cases is paltry Rs. 500. So it does not bother the restaurant operators and they happily pay it.
FDA is the main culprit in this. They are simply not responding to any of our complaints even after approaching their highest authority in Mumbai.
Could someone advise as to the which department has the final authority to shutdown such illegally run restaurants other than the courts?
Thank you in advance.
