New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday (March 5) slammed the Uttar Pradesh government for demolishing the house of a lawyer, a professor and three others in Prayagraj without following due process as per the law.
A bench of Justice Abhay S. Oka and N. Kotishwar Singh was hearing a plea by five affected individuals – advocate Zulfiqar Haider, professor Ali Ahmed, two widows and another individual whose homes, built on the same plot of land, were demolished.
The bench took exception and condemned the UP government’s action, saying it was “shocking” and sent the “wrong signal”.
“Prima facie this sends a shocking and wrong signal and this is something that needs to be corrected,” the bench said, as quoted by Bar and Bench.
The counsel for the state, Attorney General (AG) R Venkataramani, submitted that there was ground to attach notices to the concerned persons’ property.
To this, Justice Oka said, “You are taking such drastic action of demolishing homes and out of them one is a lawyer, one is professor. We know how to deal with such hyper technical arguments. After all there is something known as Article 21 and Right to Shelter.”
In their petition, they submitted that the notices were given to them on a Saturday night in March 2021 and demolition took place the very next day. The petitioners had earlier approached the Allahabad high court challenging the demolition but their plea was dismissed, reported Bar and Bench.
Senior Advocate Abhimanyu Bhandari, arguing for the petitioners, told the court that the government “mistook” their land for the land belonging to gangster-politician Atiq Ahmed, who was killed in a police encounter in 2023, the report added.
“They (the State) should just admit their mistake,” Bhandari told the court.
Venkataramani argued that reasonable time was given to the petitioners to respond to the demolition notice. However, Justice Oka disagreed, calling it a “high-handed case”.
“Why was the notice affixed like this? Why not send by courier? Anyone will give notice like this and carry out demolition. This is a high-handed case of demolition that is all,” said Justice Oka.
The AG also requested that the Allahabad high court should consider the matter but the top court refused. “Not at all. No going to high court again. Matter will be delayed then” the bench retorted.
The Supreme Court has ordered that the demolished structures need to be reconstructed.
“This structure will have to be reconstructed. If you want to contest by filing an affidavit then ok, else another less embarrassing way will be to let them construct and then serve notices to them as per law,” the court observed.
