The High Court on Thursday stayed dispossession of owners of Plaza Theatre building on MG Road, proposed to house a mega station of Metro Rail, for two weeks.

Justice B S Patil passed an interim order to this effect following a writ petition by Shravani Properties Pvt Ltd, said to have purchased the building in 2005 paying Rs 23.64 crore for developing it into a shopping mall.

The firm said it had bought the property after confirming BMRCL was not acquiring this property. But, it was later arbitrarily notified for acquisition, acting ultra vires the provisions of Karnataka Industrial Area Development Act, it said. The petition said that as per February 2004 acquisition notification, seven properties on M G Road were proposed to be acquired, up to a depth of 12 metres - Thomas Cook, Vimal Chambers, Deepam Silks, Gangarams, Higginbothomas, P N Rao and Plaza Theatre.

But, suddenly and surreptitiously, the plan was changed with mala fides to protect the interests of owners of these properties. And Revenue department issued a notification on February 13, 2006 under KIAD Act, seeking to acquire entire Plaza Theatre building while dropping others from acquisition, and while all other metro stations are proposed to be parallel to the roads, here station is proposed to be a perpendicular one, it said.

The petitioning firm has sought the Court to direct BMRCL to use only the first floor of the building for the Metro station’s ticketing counter, and allow the use of remaining space in its favour for running commercial activities.

The Court while granting BMRCL, which had filed a caveat in the case, one week time to file its objections, adjourned the case to January 29.