Like other airports in cities across India, Mumbai’s too has dozens of buildings around it, in the very pathway of aircraft taking off and landing. This has come to the fore in the wake of the horrific plane crash in Ahmedabad last week that killed 241 on board, there was a lone survivor, and nearly 30 on the ground, including trainee doctors in the BJ Medical College hostel. Why were buildings in such a close vicinity of the airport and its runway? asked many. It’s a question no one usually pays attention to at other times.

Anyone who has landed in Mumbai is familiar with the proximity of slum tenements and low buildings in Kurla as the craft descends. The colours of clothes hung out to dry on windows are clear as daylight. Some are presumably authorised, others unauthorised.

But it would be a mistake to see only the slums as unauthorised, which is typical of the middle classes and well-to-do folks, sometimes even the authorities, as the case in the Bombay High Court showed.

About a week after the Ahmedabad crash, the Maharashtra government told the court that portions of seven buildings that had flouted height norms had been demolished, including upscale ones in Santacruz.

On a petition filed by advocate Yeshwant Shenoy in 2019 about the high-rises creating “obstruction” and causing threats to the take-off and landing of aeroplanes, the Bombay HC had directed the Mumbai suburban collector in 2022 to remove 48 structures—unauthorised floors of buildings, water tanks, antennas, iron pipes and so on—that blatantly flouted rules for building height in the vicinity........

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