How Much Fine Collected In Maharashtra For Not Wearing Masks? Now PIL Filed In The Bombay High Court

Mumbai, 24 March 2021: A public interest litigation (PIL) was filed in the Bombay High Court today against the lack of transparency in the imposition of fines for not wearing the face masks by the government agencies. 

The hearing was held before the bench of Justice Girish Kulkarni and Justice SP Deshmukh. The state government, the chief secretary of the state, the Maharashtra director general of police, the social justice department and the urban development ministry have been named as defendants in the petition. On behalf of the petitioners, Adv. Ajinkya Udane with Asim Sarode, Adv. Akshay Dhiware, Adv. Amol Wadekar presented the case.

The amount of fines varies in Maharashtra and the police, municipal corporations, municipal councils, solid waste management committees all impose fines on those who do not wear masks and the amount of fines is not the same everywhere. 

Justice Girish said the government should come up with a policy to levy the same amount of fines on those who do not wear masks. Justice SP Deshmukh directed the government agencies to consider the demand for separate masks for the specially-abled (Divyang) persons and respond to all the objections of the petitioners by March 31, such as the use of masks, imposition of fines, waste masks. 

Adv. Asim Sarode, while raising various issues during the argument, pointed out to the court that it is necessary to guide how to utilize the huge amount of money that is collected as a fine for not wearing masks and to bring transparency in the process of recovery of fines.

Important points in PIL:

• At the same time, the police and the Municipal Corporation, the Municipal Council collected fines from those who did not wear masks.
• Who exactly is the authority to take action against those who do not wear masks?
• A huge amount of money has been collected in the form of fines from all over Maharashtra during the last one year.
• How much fine was collected by the police in Maharashtra and how much fine by the Municipal Corporation and Nagar Parishad?
• If a person is penalized for not wearing a mask, then why the police and other government agencies did not immediately issue a mask to the person who did not wear the mask.
• Demand that crores of rupees of fines be used only for the health of the people.
• Demand for transparent disclosure of the total amount of fines collected in Maharashtra to date.
• Referring to senior journalist P Sainath’s book ‘Dushkal Awade Sarvana’, the petition said that Covid time was spent by the central government to collect personal information of citizens and create a climate of fear from them, while the state government’s police became rich by imposing fines.
• Corporations of various political parties, Municipal Councils have also collected a huge amount of money by taking action against those who do not wear masks.
• Large waste of used and discarded masks has been created everywhere but no special efforts have been made in any city of Maharashtra to manage it separately.
• The money collected as a penalty during viral infection like Covid-19 should be used to distribute masks to the poor, homeless, BPL families.
• Masks with special symbols should be given to specially-abled persons by the Department of Social Justice. When everyone is wearing a mask, the biggest dilemma of communication is for the deaf persons because they can often guess from the movements of the lips of others what the person in front of them wants to say.
• Chintamani Hasbanis of Pune experimented with a separate sticker for deaf and dumb people to wear a mask, according to the PIL.
• Adv Asim Sarode also said that the state government should issue a standard operating procedure (SOP) to determine the penal code for those who do not wear masks, an account of the money recovered, how to spend the money and to distribute free masks to people.