POND SQUABBLE: The Bypass watery tract, which is at the centre of a dispute between its promoters and residents of an adjoining housing estate. A Telegraph picture

Calcutta High Court on Friday restrained Mani Group from erecting a wall around a watery tract at 32 Circular Canal Road and changing its character till further orders.

The division bench of Justice Tapen Sen and Justice Tapan Kumar Dutta issued the order on a petition by Mani Group — which owns the plot — challenging an interim order of a lower bench to maintain status quo.

The 11-bigha tract has been at the centre of a dispute between the promoters and residents of the adjoining Purbasha Housing Estate.

The residents of the estate claim the tract is a pond and that Mani Group is trying to erect a wall around it to fill it up. The promoters, on the other hand, had produced “civic records” to claim that the patch was land, not a pond.

On January 5, the residents had alleged that the promoters’ men had fired in the air and unleashed dogs on them when they tried to resist an “attempt at landfill”.

Mani Group later moved a single-judge bench of the high court, seeking permission to erect the wall. The court asked civic commissioner Alapan Bandyopadhyay to determine the character of the plot, pending which status quo would have to be maintained.

The promoters then filed an appeal against the order before the division bench of Justice Sen and Justice Dutta.

Similar bar: Delivering a similar order, the division bench of Chief Justice S.S. Nijjar and Justice P.C. Ghose asked the Bharat Elan Educational Trust not to change the character of a 45-bigha plot in Choubhaga, off the Bypass, till further orders. The Trust wants to set up an engineering college on the plot.

A Choubhaga resident, Subol Modal, had filed a petition claiming that the plot was part of the East Calcutta Wetlands, a “no-development zone”. He is seeking an order restraining the Trust from constructing the college. The civic body’s lawyer, Alok Ghosh, told the court that the 45-bigha plot is a waterbody.