Prayagraj demolition: Supreme Court takes exception to UP Govt’s ‘high-handedness’
The Supreme Court has pulled up the Uttar Pradesh Government over demolition of houses in Prayagraj without following proper legal procedure and said the action sends a “shocking and wrong signal”.
“You are taking such drastic action of demolishing homes and out of them one is a lawyer, one is a professor. We know how to deal with such hyper technical arguments. After all there is something known as Article 21 and Right to Shelter...,” a Bench of Justice Abhay S Oka and Justice N Kotishwar Singh said, adding “Prima facie this sends shocking and wrong signals and this is something that needs to be corrected.”
“There is now a judgment of the co-ordinate Bench on bulldozer justice also,” it said, posting the matter for further hearing on March 21.
Attorney General R Venkataramani sought to defend the state government’s action saying that reasonable time was given to the petitioners to respond to the demolition notice.
“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’s all,” the Bench said on Wednesday.
Petitioners—advocate Zulfiqar Haider, Prof Ali Ahmed, two widows and another individual whose houses on a portion of Nazul Plot No. 19, Lukerganj, police station Khuldabad in Prayagraj district were demolished and they moved the top court after Allahabad High Court dismissed their plea against the demolition.
A demolition notice dated March 1, 2021, was served on the petitioners on March 6, 2021, and the demolition was carried out the very next day without giving them a reasonable opportunity to challenge it before the appellate authority under provisions of the UP Urban Planning and Development Act, the petitioners alleged.
Senior counsel Abhimanyu Bhandari submitted that notices were given to them on Saturday night and their houses were demolished on Sunday in March 2021. The state government mistook the petitioners’ land for that belonging to gangster-politician Atiq Ahmed killed in 2023.
The Bench turned down Venkataramani’s request to send the matter back to the Allahabad High Court, saying it would delay the whole thing.
“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 Bench told Venkataramani.
The Allahabad High Court held that the land in question was leased in 1906 which expired in 1996 and applications for freehold conversion were rejected in 2015 and 2019.
The UP Government contended that the land was earmarked for public use and the petitioners had no rights as their transactions lacked the District Collector’s approval.
