Lighting a rocket or a ladi in the lane outside your building this Diwali breaks a court order. On October 15, a Bombay High Court bench of Justices Girish S Kulkarni and Neela K Gokhale ruled that its ban on bursting firecrackers on public roads applies throughout the year and to every festival, Bar and Bench reported. Diwali falls on November 8 this year, with Dhanteras on November 6, so the order will face its biggest test in about three weeks.
From a Ganeshotsav rule to a year-round ban
The bench first barred crackers on public roads on September 22, in the middle of Ganeshotsav, while hearing a suo motu PIL on festival noise and air pollution (listed as High Court on its own motion v. State of Maharashtra). That order also tightened rules for loudspeakers and processions. Loudspeakers stay off between 10 pm and 6 am, and the state may relax that to midnight on festival days for at most 15 days a year, ThePrint noted in its account of the September directions.
Last week’s hearing settled a question many families had after Ganpati ended: did the rule lapse with the festival? The bench said no and named Navratri, Diwali and Christmas among the festivals it covers. The judges pointed to post-Diwali smog and its toll on children and older residents, and told officials they had “no control” over cracker bursting. In the bench’s view, Maharashtra has enough rules on paper and fails to enforce them, the Free Press Journal reported.
What you can and cannot do on November 8
- Barred: bursting crackers on streets, lanes and footpaths. The wording the court asked the BMC and the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board (MPCB) to publish names all three.
- Still legal: making and selling crackers. The court said it has not touched manufacture or sale, so you can still buy them from licensed shops.
- Encouraged: green, lower-emission crackers used within prescribed time limits. The bench wants the awareness drive to promote them.
The reports do not say whether a housing society’s private compound counts as a public place, and the court has not designated any open grounds for bursting. If your building usually lights crackers on the road outside the gate, plan for the compound or skip it. A society committee that wants certainty can ask the local ward office or police station before the festival.
Notices, posters and a way to complain
The bench gave the state government, the BMC and the MPCB a week to start an awareness campaign: programmes in schools, announcements, and display boards in buses, at bus stops and in trains, with celebrities roped in if possible. The BMC and the MPCB must jointly publish notices in newspapers and on social media that crackers in public places will not be permitted, according to UNI.
For residents, the complaint channel matters most. The court asked municipal corporations, the MPCB and the police to set up a way for citizens to report violations, such as dedicated phone numbers or email IDs. One lawyer suggested adapting the traffic police’s app-based grievance system, the Free Press Journal reported. As of October 21, we could not find a published helpline or notice from the BMC or Mumbai Police listing these channels. Until one appears, the police emergency number 112 and your local police station remain the routes for reporting crackers on a public road.
The September order lets police act under the Noise Pollution Rules, the Environment (Protection) Act, the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and the Explosives Act, and seize offending sound equipment, according to ThePrint. Police officers will decide on Lakshmi Pujan night whether to use those powers against a family bursting a few anars in a gully.
Sources: Bar and Bench, Free Press Journal, UNI, ThePrint
This report was written with AI assistance from the publicly reported sources linked here; each fact was cross-checked against at least two of them.