The Cuttack Municipal Corporation (CMC) with the help of the city police sealed as many as 10 Kalyan Mandaps (community halls) on Tuesday. The axe fell on these halls as they were operating illegally without having valid licences from the civic body.
The shutting down of the Kalyan Mandaps came in the wake of an order passed by a Division Bench headed by Justice Indrajit Mahanti of the Orissa High Court in March this year.
According to official sources, nine Kalyan Mandaps were shut down under the lalbag police limits and another under the Bidanasi Police Station. The civic body is planning to close down as many as 104 Kalyan Mandaps in the city. There are nearly 200 mandaps in the city catering to marriages and other community functions.
A letter petition was filed in the High Court alleging that the mandaps were hosting functions without adhering to the specified pollution norms. Most of the mandaps do not have proper parking spaces, as a result of which during marriage seasons, the road traffics in nearby areas go haywire.
Converting the letter petition into a PIl, the High Court had asked the city civic body to issue licences to those mandaps which follow proper norms and shut down the violators. A committee headed by an amicus curie had identified that a total of 104 mandaps did not obtain licences from the civic body.
In another development, district health officials on the day also sealed two private nursing homes and a diagnostic centre in the city after verifying that these health centres were functioning without valid permissions.