New Delhi: The Supreme Court may have deemed bulldozer justice “totally unconstitutional” and equated it a “lawless state of affairs” but that has not deterred Uttar Pradesh chief minister Adityanath from warning of their use in future.
Wrapping up his election campaign in Jharkhand on November 18, Adityanath hinted at the use of bulldozers against political opponents if the Bharatiya Janata Party was voted to power in the state. In fact, just five days after the apex court stated that the government would not be allowed to demolish the property of an accused person without following due process of law, bulldozers were parked at the venue of at least two public meetings addressed by Adityanath in Jharkhand on November 18.
Adityanath’s defiant reference to the bulldozer comes in the wake of two adverse decisions in the Supreme Court against the government on the trend of illegal demolition of property. A three-judge bench including the then Chief Justice of India, D.Y. Chandrachud, on November 6, directed Adityanath’s government to pay a senior journalist Manoj Tibrewal a compensation of Rs 25 lakh after his ancestral house and shop were unlawfully demolished by officials for widening a road in Maharajganj. In its judgment, the court said that “Bulldozer justice is simply unacceptable under the rule of law” and that, “Justice through bulldozers is unknown to any civilised system of jurisprudence.”
Then, on November 13, the Supreme Court while indicting the government for starting a trend of illegally demolishing homes and properties of persons accused of crime, said such arbitrary actions by officials would be dealt with a heavy hand of the law.
These words seem to have had no impact on Adityanath, who has often glorified the use of bulldozers, earning the moniker ‘bulldozer baba‘ – ‘father who uses bulldozers’. While accusing the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha-led government in Jharkhand of looting the resources of the state, Adityanath said bulldozers were ready to retrieve the money.
“Isi dacoity se paisa nikalne ke liye bulldozer khada hain. Isi dacoity ke paise ko vapas lene ke liye (these bulldozers are parked here to retrieve the money looted in dacoities, to get back the money taken in these dacoities),” Adityanath said in Jamtara district. The statement was met with loud cheers.
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His allegations that the JMM and its partner Congress had looted the resources of the state along with the funds sent by the central government of Narendra Modi were based on the recovery of alleged unaccounted cash from two opposition leaders during raids by central agencies. In May, the Enforcement Directorate said that it recovered around Rs 20 crore in “unaccounted cash” from the premises of the domestic help of the personal secretary to Jharkhand minister Alamgir Khan. In a previous rally in Koderma, Adityanath had compared Alamgir Khan to Mughal emperor Aurangzeb.
In December 2023, the Income Tax department said it had recovered Rs 350 crore in cash from entities linked to the companies of Congress Rajya Sabha MP Dhiraj Sahu.
Referring to both these raids, Adityanath said the “mountain of notes” recovered from Sahu and Khan were examples of how the JMM-Congress government had looted the state. “This money does not belong to the JMM or the Congress but to the people of Jharkhand,” said Adityanath as he warned that the bulldozers (parked at his rally venue) would retrieve the money.
The bulldozers also featured in his rally in Rajmahal. But he did not refer to them in the rally. However, in a post made later on social media site X (formerly Twitter), Adityanath shared a picture of the rally in Rajmahal showing his supporters perched on three bulldozers. Two of the bulldozers had supporters holding large saffron flags (shaped as stacked triangles).
Adityanath referred to the use of bulldozers in a recent rally in Koderma, where he gloated about the impact demolitions through bulldozers had in his state UP ever since he assumed power. “Prior to 2017, the mafia would walk around UP with the chests pumped. But after 2017, when bulldozers started being used, even the most dreaded mafia left the lands of UP. Today, some are in jail while others have embarked on a ‘ram naam satya hain’ yatra,” said Adityanath.
