Area fitting `silent zone' terms, needn't be declared so:

Area fitting `silent zone' terms, needn't be declared so: High Court
Mumbai, Mar 27: Bombay High Court has said that there is no need to seperately declare an area a silent zone, when it fits the 2000 Noise Pollution Regulation Control Rules' definition of one.

According to the 2000 Rules, silent zone is an area within a hundred-metre radius of hospitals, educational institutions, courts, religious places, or "any area which is declared by competent authority as silent zone".

In silent zone, noise-level cannot cross the limit of 50 decible in day-time and 50 decible in night-time.

Petitioner Vidya Bhushan Naik, who had been refused a permission to hold a gathering of poets at Kalbadevi area here by police because area falls in silent zone, had contended that there was no explicit declaration denoting any area as silent zone.

But division bench of Justices D G Deshpande and V K Tahilramani, recently held that going by the definition in 2000 Rules, declaration was only necessary when an area did not meet the defintion of silent zone.