New Delhi: Four years have passed since bulldozers of the Adityanath-led Uttar Pradesh government unceremoniously tore down retired Urdu professor Ali Ahmed Fatmi’s house in Prayagraj. The harsh action hurt Fatmi financially and socially destabilised him. But, most importantly, left him with an emotional scar.
On the rare occasion he passes by the site of his old house, he called home for over three decades – which today lies in ruins due to an ongoing litigation following the demolition – Fatmi is filled with sorrow. “I cannot even bear to look at it,” he told The Wire.
A well-respected litterateur and former head of the Urdu department of Allahabad University (AU), Fatmi’s house was demolished in March 2021 by the administration on grounds that it was an illegal construction. Along with Fatmi’s house, the administration also demolished his daughter Naila Fatmi’s house as well as adjoining properties of lawyer Zulfiquar Haider and two others. The five said that the demolitions were carried out in a hurried manner without affording them a reasonable opportunity of carrying the matter before the appellate authority under the provisions of Section 27(2) of the UP Urban Planning and Development Act, 1973.
Fatmi is unable to conceal the pain of witnessing the loss of his elaborate library, where he had stored hundreds of books.
“Of course, we received a financial setback but the emotional loss was much more. I taught all my life in AU as a professor. I travelled round the world. In other countries, professors and writers are allotted houses to read and write. They showed no consideration that I was a man of literature. The ruthless manner in which they demolished it caused me more trauma,” said Fatmi.
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Aggrieved by the demolition notice, Fatmi and others had hastily knocked on the doors of the Allahabad high court but got no relief. By the time the matter was heard, their homes had already been demolished. Now, four years later, oral observations by the Supreme Court censuring the Adityanath government for demolishing the houses allegedly without following proper legal procedure, have ignited a hope in Fatmi that justice would be done.
A bench of Justices Abhay S. Oka and N. Kotiswar Singh recently, hearing a special leave petition filed by the aggrieved parties, reprimanded the government over the demolition, saying that it sent a “shocking and wrong signal.”
The apex court said the state action was drastic and even threatened to order the reconstruction of the demolished properties, arguing that the government’s hyper technical arguments could be dealt with appropriately. The court sought a response from the government.
It all started with the Prayagraj Development Authority (PDA) serving a demolition notice to Fatmi on the evening of March 6, 2021, a Saturday. The notice, however, was dated March 1. And before Fatmi and others could react, their properties were demolished with a tearing hurry on March 7.
“They did not listen to us. On March 6, they came in the evening and chucked a notice, which was dated March 1, at us. They didn’t even paste it. And the very next day – it was a Sunday – they suddenly appeared and demolished the house,” said Fatmi. The Urdu scholar alleged that the weekend was strategically chosen by the administration to thwart any form of legal intervention. “It was an act of cunning and a criminal action, so that we couldn’t go to court,” he said.
Fatmi has never quite been able to fully understand why his house was demolished. The administration had no reason to target him, he said. “We committed no crime. We had no fault. We had been paying the house tax and the water tax,” he said.
He believes that the administration was eager to clear the entire plot of land (Nazul plot no 19) in Lukerganj locality. They had earlier deemed a portion of it belonging to former Member of Parliament Atiq Ahmad as illegal encroachment and demolished it.
Atiq, a criminally-tarnished politician who was targetted by the Adityanath government through laws such as the Gangsters Act, was murdered on camera in 2023. Fatmi said that Atiq’s properties were situated on either side of his house.“Since they had demolished his properties, they wanted to demolish the adjoining properties in the campus to vacate the entire plot. We got sandwiched. We got wrapped up in it,” said Fatmi.
The issue is related to Nazul plot no 19 in Lukerganj. Nazul means any land or building which is the property of the government on the basis of public records. Nazul plot 19 was leased out to one Shakir Hussain on March 19, 1996 by the Allahabad district magistrate, acting on behalf of the government. The lease was initially for a block period of 30 years, renewable for two successive periods of 30 years each, subject to an aggregate of 90 years. When Fatmi and other aggrieved persons had approached the high court, they argued that the original lessee transferred his rights in the demised premises to three women, Kulsoom Begum, Mahmooda Begum and Kannez Fatima in 1960 with the due permission of the district magistrate. Afterwards, Kulsoom and Kannez by will transferred their rights in favour of one Haji Firoz Ahmad, who was the father of former MP Atiq.
Mahmooda did not transfer her right to Haji Firoz but sold out her portion to different people. Fatmi purchased a portion of the plot through a sale deed on February 2, 1989, executed by Mahmooda. Those whose homes were demolished in 2021, submitted in court that the constructions were more than 50 years old, and were built even before the UP Urban Planning and Development Act, 1973 came into being.
On March 6, 2021, around 6:30 pm, Fatmi was served a notice which said that a demolition notice dated January 8 had been served requiring him to demolish the “unauthorised construction” by or before January 27.
Fatmi informed the high court that the said notice of January 8 was never served on him. He said that he had moved an application for conversion of the plot purchased by him into freehold by making a deposit of 25% of the freehold amount in the treasury on July 1, 1997. Till date, however, no decision had been taken on his application, Fatmi informed the court.
His daughter Naila Fatmi, who had purchased a portion of the plot in 2013 from one Hamid Ali, also made similar arguments. As did advocate Zulfiquar Haider (who purchased his part of the plot in 2014), Baby Maimuna (purchased in 2013) and Vijay Kumar Singh (2020).
The five petitioners said that they were not trespassers but lessees, who upon the expiry of the term of lease, had filed applications for conversion of the leasehold interest to free hold.
The PDA submitted a letter dated September 15, 2020 issued by the district magistrate, which said that the lease of the plot had expired in 1996. There were six applications for conferment of freehold rights on the plot. One application was rejected in 2015 and the remaining five were rejected in November, 2019. On rejection of the applications, the names of the patta holder were struck off and the land, consequent to determination of the lease, vest in the state, said the PDA.
The PDA also said that the plot had been earmarked for public use and the possession was already taken. All the constructions that stood before the demolition were nothing but unauthorised and made with a view to grab state land, the PDA said. The development authority also claimed that the petitioners had no right over the plot as they were neither original lessee nor successors of the original lessee.
A high court bench of Justices Manoj Misra and Rohit Ranjan Agarwal on March 8, 2021 dismissed petitions filed by Fatmi and others, taking into consideration the 2020 letter of the district magistrate. The letter said that the applications for conferment of freehold rights over the plot had already been rejected and that the district magistrate had not granted any permission for the sale of the portion of the plot.
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The court ruled that since the lease had expired in 1996 and the transfers made in favour were not in accordance with the terms and conditions of lease, Fatmi and others had failed to demonstrate that such transfers had taken place with the written consent of the district magistrate. They derived no right over the demised premises to maintain a claim against the state and its instrumentalities, the high court said.
Justices Misra and Agarwal said that the petitioners had failed to establish any valid or subsisting right over the land in dispute, and as such they had no right to resist state action.
One of the conditions of the lease was that the lessee would not transfer or assign the demised premises without the permission of the state or district magistrate. The high court said that although Fatmi and others submitted that the original lessee had transferred his interest in the demised premises in 1960 with the consent of the district magistrate, they could not produce any document on record to prove the claim.
Fatmi refrained from talking about the legal aspects of the case currently in the Supreme Court, which is due to hear the matter again on March 21. He rued that he could no longer store as many books as he did earlier when he had a proper library. After his house was demolished in 2021, Fatmi initially lived at his in-law’s place for about two months before moving into a flat he had purchased from his retirement funds, in the Kareli area of Prayagraj.
“A flat is a flat. It does not have the space to keep all the books I want. I only have a handful of books now. I gave away most of them after the demolition,” he said.
