In December 1992, when the unauthorised construction was chanced upon by the Thane collectorate, an inquiry was instituted. It revealed that 60 bungalows had been constructed in Yeoor and almost all of them were unauthorised. The Thane Municipal Corporation then began the legal procedures required for demolition. Madhukar Choube was then the municipal commissioner of Thane.

The 60 bungalow owners were served notices on March 10, 1993, precisely four days after Sharad Pawar took oath as chief minister succeeding Sudhakarrao Naik. Notices were issued under Section 260 (1) (2) of the Bombay Provincial Municipal Corporation Act then as now. However, five of them approached the BombayHigh Court and obtained a stay against the notices. ``It was the first roadblock which we anticipated,'' sources said.

However, what took the then commissionerate by complete surprise was a missive from the chief minister's office on July 9, 1993. After the phone-call, Choube gave orders to his officers to stop the demolitions, sources said. By then, the TMC officers had demolished 11 of these bungalows. That stay order was not revoked in a hurry. Suspending the demolition through political intervention encouraged more unauthorised construction in Yeoor, officials said. Demolition was resumed in 1996 but only a few could be razed then.

This effort was the most comprehensive, covering almost all the unauthorised bungalows, sources said. This time too, the intervention was from Chief Minister Manohar Joshi's office, though he took pains to clarify that he was acting on instructions of his political boss and Shiv Sena leader Bal Thackeray. In fact, officials of the Urban Development Department and two otherdepartments requested a special meeting with Joshi to discuss this issue on November 27, 1998. The CM's office responded on December 1 that ``a meeting is not required'' and action can be taken according to the law.

This was conveyed to Thane municipal commissioner T Chandrashekhar and followed up by a written order from the Urban Development Department on December 3. Less than four bungalows had been demolished when the stay order was communicated to him -- again through a phone-call -- to stay the action. Now with reconstruction of these bungalows and owners thumbing their nose at the law as it were -- Sena corporator Madan Mantri's statement that ``what we say is law'' indicating the impetuousness -- sources say demolition may not begin in a hurry. ``Yeoor is a very ticklish issue for any government, it has always been so for the last six years,'' sources said.