Advocate Who Hates 'Jerks'

Were it not for a jerk that Advocate Yashwant Shenoy felt every time his flight landed at Mumbai’s Chhatrapati International Airport, the High Court of Bombay would not have taken notice of the gross violations in building constructions taking place at the end of the airport’s runway.

- Pradeep Chandra

If there is one person that Mumbai Airport authorities or the Directorate General of Civil Aviation or even the Airports Authority of India would love to have out of their hair, it is Advocate Yashwant Shenoy. Waging a single-handed battle to put a stop to jerks during landings at Mumbai, Shenoy would have remained virtually unknown but ever since he started a crowd funding campaign to collect donations in his fight against the Mumbai aviation authorities, air travellers and slum-dwellers from India’s ‘Maximum City’ have suddenly woken up to take notice – all because of a petition the advocate filed in 2014 against the illegal construction of buildings in the ‘no obstacle zone’ of the airport.

Determined to find a solution, Shenoy collected documentary evidence in the two years’ time that the AAI (Airports Authority of India) tried suppressing his allegations. His evidence has so far led to the Bombay High Court pulling up the DGCA (Directorate General of Civil Aviation) which has since then issued notices to 439 buildings to reduce their height in the ‘no obstacle zone’ itself. If this is the case in the 0-4km zone, Shenoy wonders how many such buildings will be in the 20-km ‘restricted zone’ of the airport.