The Supreme Court on Tuesday accused the Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs of stalling the process of taking action against illegal constructions in Delhi, PTI reported. The top court questioned the delay in setting up a procedure to issue notices to defaulters.
A bench of Justices Madan B Lokur and Deepak Gupta asked Additional Solicitor General ANS Nadkarni, representing the Centre, to explain the reason for the delay. “Why is your ministry stalling everything?” the bench asked. “For an agreed procedure, two adjournments have been taken. This is too much.”
The court said that the ministry had adopted an “everybody is to be blamed except us” attitude. “If in Delhi, you will fight like this, then you will have to fight in all other parts of the country also. Why this confrontation?” the bench said.
Nadkarni said the ministry was considering incorporating a rule book.
Senior advocate Ranjit Kumar, assisting the top court as amicus curiae in the sealing matter, said that a court-appointed monitoring committee had found that the Land and Development Office was stalling the sealing operation. The committee said that the official concerned was not attending the committee’s meetings or responding to telephone queries.
The bench directed Nadkarni to make a phone call to the official concerned, who in turn told the court that the official was ill and would file an affidavit on the matter soon.
The court questioned the lack of update reports from the special task force set up to monitor the enforcement of laws on illegal construction. “I fail to understand what are we supposed to do,” Lokur said. The bench scheduled the next hearing for October 31.
The sealing drive
Soon after the sealing drive began in December 2017, traders staged agitations and major wholesale and retail markets in Delhi shut down in protest for a few days at a time. During the drive, the civic bodies sealed shops and restaurants for encroachment and illegal constructions, among other violations, and for allegedly not having paid conversion charges.
In April, the Centre told the Supreme Court that a special task force would be set up to oversee the enforcement of laws to deal with unauthorised construction and encroachments, and look into the safety of buildings that have been built legally. The court had then ordered the immediate formation of the special task force and prohibited any further unauthorised construction in 1,797 illegal colonies in Delhi.
On July 18 the top court asked the Centre to continue the sealing drive and to formulate guidelines within two weeks to blacklist builders, contractors and architects who construct buildings that violate the sanctioned plan.
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