Bulldozer “justice” is unacceptable under the rule of law, and the government must follow due processes before removing allegedly illegal encroachments, the Supreme Court has said.
The court made the remark in a judgement on November 6, in which it directed the Uttar Pradesh government to pay Rs 25 lakh as compensation to a man whose home it said had been unlawfully demolished. The judgement was made publicly available on Saturday.
The man, a journalist named Manoj Tibrewal Akash, said his home was demolished in 2019 for a road-widening project in the Maharajganj district without the authorities giving him notice.
Akash alleged that the demolition was reprisal for “a newspaper report which contained allegations of wrongdoing in relation to the construction of the road in question”. The court said it did not need to engage with this allegation, except to the extent that it provided the background to his grievances.
However, a bench of Chief Justice DY Chandrachud and Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra said that “justice” through bulldozers was “unknown to any civilised system of jurisprudence”.
The court added that citizens’ voices could not be throttled by the threat of destroying their properties. “The ultimate security which a human being possesses is to the homestead,” it noted.
The bench said that if such punitive demolitions were to be permitted, “the constitutional recognition of the right to property under Article 300A would be reduced to a dead letter”. It called for disciplinary actions against officials who sanction or carry out such demolitions.
The court proposed to lay down “certain minimum thresholds of procedural safeguards” that must be fulfilled before authorities take action against citizens’ properties.
“The law does not undoubtedly condone unlawful occupation of public property and encroachments,” the court said. “There are municipal laws and town-planning legislation which contain adequate provisions for dealing with illegal encroachments. Where such legislation exists the safeguards which are provided in it must be observed.”
In Akash’s case, the court concluded that the process that the government followed was high-handed. In addition to ordering compensation, the bench also told the government to inquire into the illegal demolition and take disciplinary action against officials responsible for it.
The Supreme Court also directed the Uttar Pradesh chief secretary to file a first information report in the matter. It ordered the state’s Crime Branch, Crime Investigation Department to look into the case.
There are no provisions in Indian law that allow for the demolition of property as a punitive measure. Nevertheless, the practice has become commonplace mainly in states ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party.
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