How Jahangirpuri Demolitions Went On Despite Supreme Court Orders

[00:00:00] You are listening to The Quint's Podcast. Head by Kaminal Vailan's just days earlier on 16th April, Delhi's Jahangirpuri on 28th April saw seven bulldozers roll into the neighbourhood accompanied by heavy police deployments as the BJP-led North Delhi Municipal Cooperation raised parts of shops, carts, tinsheds,

[00:00:28] homes and the gates of a mosque. The demolition which started at 10am went on for over an hour till 12.15pm despite the Supreme Court's directions at 11am that the status quo be maintained.

[00:00:38] In taking notice of the disregard of its order, an apex court bench of Justice Allen Rao and B. R. Gavai heard a clutch of petitions on 21st April where it extended its status quo order for two more weeks and said that it would quote-and-quote take a serious view

[00:00:51] of all the demolitions that took place after the court's decision was communicated to the mayor. The demolition drive has left behind a trail of despair in Jahangirpuri due to the lack of due process followed by the NDMC with many vendors and shopkeepers asserting

[00:01:04] that they were not given any notice of the demolition drive and more so were not even given a chance to move their carts and stalls. So in today's episode we take a look back at what happened in Jahangirpuri on 28th

[00:01:15] April and the impact of the demolitions through the quince ground reports and also take a look at the arguments made in the Supreme Court with the quince legal editor Vakasha Sazdev. You are tuned into The Big Story, the podcast where we dissect the headline making news

[00:01:31] for you and I am your host, Ahmed. Thirty-year-old Rukia who used to run a Sikh kebab shop in Jahangirpuri lost her only source of livelihood after her cart was raised by bulldozers. Ten minutes after her shop was demolished, the Supreme Court issued the stay order.

[00:01:52] Picking to the quince she said that she pleaded with the police to let her take her cart but the police denied her request stating that quote-and-quote whatever is lying outside will be broken. The Supreme Court ordered her to leave ten minutes earlier. Ten minutes earlier? Yes.

[00:02:17] And then the order came. And when did you know? I woke up and said that they would take the cart. So when I was standing near the raid, the other time when I had broken the raid I told the police to let me take the cart inside.

[00:02:30] They said no, whatever is outside will be broken. So I broke it. You didn't try to stop them? Yes, I didn't try to stop them. I didn't try to stop them. So I tried to stop them but they still didn't stop. They broke it.

[00:02:45] Another resident named Rihanna told the quince that she spent Rs. 80,000 on her Puri Sabji cart which she used to run every day from 6am to 1pm. Like Rukia, she too wasn't allowed to save her cart from being demolished. The order was broken. We didn't know.

[00:03:00] We couldn't remove the raid. When we found out, we called the police and said let us go. We will remove the raid. We have a daily routine. We are sick. We are ready to remove it. I will take the child and give him the shop.

[00:03:17] They said no, we won't let them go. We have a big officer and if we let them go, we will lose our money. They said they didn't let us remove the raid. They asked for a bull ledger and broke it. They broke our cart.

[00:03:27] They have broken our cart. Dilip Saxena who used to run a juice shop named Delhi's Fruit Juice and Sugarcane Juice said that he had a license for his shop and even paid house tax for it.

[00:03:38] Showing his license papers to the Quents reporter, Samaj Grover, Mr Saxena said that he has incurred a loss of Rs 7-8 lakhs because of the demolition. My name is Dilip Saxena and my shop is here in Delhi. It was named as Delhi Fruit Juice and Sugarcane Juice.

[00:03:51] I also had a license for MCD. I also give MCD house tax. I have an allotment from DDAJJ Salam. This is my license. I have allotment from DDAJ. These are all papers. My name is Reshti. I have made a license for them.

[00:04:10] I also give house tax for this shop. This is house tax. Jeevan Kusal Sanima. This is my name. Sir, when did you come to know about this? When they broke it, the police didn't let us go in. It was around 10 pm.

[00:04:28] When they did the business, they did it in a way that they targeted only two shops. The allotment. I will appeal to Mr Jogi and Mr Modi that they should break the unlawful rights. This lack of notice as claimed by the residents of Jahangirpuri

[00:05:02] is important because it flies straight in the face of the MCD's practice before demolishing encroachments. There is also a legal precedent here. The Delhi Municipal Corporation Act of 1957 states that the civic body needs to give at least five days notice to a person

[00:05:16] who has carried out the alleged illegal construction. During this time, the person can be asked to make alterations failing which the corporation has the power to demolish or seal the unauthorized structure. Senior advocate Davey argued that the demolition driver's quote-in-quote completely unconstitutional and illegal

[00:05:32] and that no notice had been given to the residents. Vakasha Swazdeva, the quince legal editor, takes us through the arguments made in the court today. So the main issue over the civic bodies action in Jahangirpuri is about the process which has to be followed.

[00:05:46] Now the Delhi Municipal Corporation Act of 1957 has some detailed provisions on the way demolitions and encroachments are supposed to take place. It also has detailed provisions on regularization. So the hearings began with Senior Advocate Dushan Davey who was representing the Jamiat Olamai

[00:06:07] and he actually was pointing out that most of these encroachments, supposedly encroachments had been in place for over 30 years as a result of which they should be regularized under the Municipal Corporation Act provisions on regularization. He after that when he returned to the issue of encroachment

[00:06:30] he talked about how these people had not been given a chance to be heard which there has to be a right to do that, to challenge any allegation of encroachment and there's even an appellate process which it seems was not followed.

[00:06:46] So these are all the points which were raised by them during the case. At the same time of course, the Minister General Tushar Mata defended the NDMC according to him there was a sufficient notice given. He pointed out that some of the work on encroachments

[00:07:06] and some of the attempts to demolish buildings began in January this year but then there had been further attempts in February. He talked about the Fahiklaim that some of these Jangepuri commercial establishments had even filed paperwork in the Delhi High Court where they acknowledged that they'd received notice.

[00:07:29] This was contested by the juice shop seller Ganesh Gupta who you might have seen images of him in the news during the encroachment drive as it was happening on Wednesday when they were trying to demolish the shop. He said that this was absolutely not true,

[00:07:47] that notice had not been actually sent and he claimed he would be able to have documents to prove that his building was actually a legal construction. So essentially the key issue is going to come down to whether or not notice, adequate notice was actually sent,

[00:08:03] whether an opportunity was given to these people whose properties are claimed to be in legal encroachments to contest the NDMC's claims, whether they'd been given an adequate right to be heard and even whether the appellate process under the Delhi Municipal Corporation Act had been followed

[00:08:21] which is also with the judges at Point Rd. There is an appellate process as supposed to be a further period of time given before the order of a legal encroachment becomes final. So that's something which the court will have to see. They've asked for detailed affidavits and counteraffidavits

[00:08:38] to be filed over the next two weeks before their next hearing. So it will be seen now whether or not this, it'll be interesting to see whether the NDMC can show that they actually sent relevant documentation for all the processes under the Municipal Corporation Act

[00:08:53] and if they are able to put that on the scene then their actions will be bona fide, but if not then that's a huge problem for them when it comes to legality. According to Vakasha, if the actual process of sending a notice has not been followed,

[00:09:09] it also violates an individual's rights under Article 14 and 16 of the Indian Constitution. Now if the actual process for demolition of encroachments has not been followed then there are some serious violations which could take place. First off you're talking about there's a potential violation

[00:09:30] of Article 14 which is the equality before law. That's one of the reasons why it was also pointed out that around 731 different unauthorized colonies and encroachments across Delhi. I think the Ministry of Home Affairs had in 2019 released around 69 of these which we include

[00:09:52] a lot of upper class posh neighborhoods like the organic farms, golf links also supposedly has a number of encroachments in the way who lives there. Every second house there has unauthorized constructions what are you doing about those? So the fact that action is only being taken

[00:10:14] against one neighborhood without following the process would show that you're not having equality before the law which becomes a violation of Article 14. There is also the fact that if the process is not followed there's a clear violation of Article 21.

[00:10:30] Now the right to life and personal liberty over the years is something which has been talked about by the Supreme Court they've expanded the jurisprudence on this in a lot of ways. The right to have a home is something which very much falls

[00:10:42] within this there was the Supreme Court's Olga Thely's judgment which talked about from the right to shelter. All these sort of things are there under Article 21. Now this is again sort of obviously an absolute right because obviously if there are illegal buildings,

[00:10:57] there are unauthorized constructions and these can be removed in your right to a home cannot supersede that. But then that has to be, but if you're going to be deprived of your right it has to be in accordance with a procedure established by law

[00:11:12] and if the procedure has not been followed in this case giving the right to be heard allowing the people to actually contest these claims about illegal encroachment allowing them to access the appellate process. If these procedures have not been followed

[00:11:28] then again it means that Article 21 has been violated so that even though it may be allowed even though it's a reasonable restriction to say that okay illegal encroachments can be demolished, can be destroyed if you've not followed the adequate process for it

[00:11:42] you've not done the right notice procedure then that gets struck down by the courts. This is something which the central government which the Tushar Mehta, the Solicitor General of coming here on behalf of the authorities is strongly contested given that that is one of the petitions

[00:12:10] which is being heard along with all of this so this is also challenging these kind of activities taking place across the country which even mentioned what happened in Khargani and Mathya Pradesh the Solicitor General strongly contested that as well saying no, even their notices were sent

[00:12:25] every procedure, every process was followed it's quite easy to show whether this was done or not so the paperwork which is going to be filed over the next two weeks will show that if it turns out that there has been a failure to follow the exact process

[00:12:39] then that spells a serious problem for the authorities and it will start with Jahangir Puri it could then go up to the other areas across the country as well if the court decides to fully take up that petition

[00:12:51] and once they pass an order about the Jahangir Puri situation then that could also become an issue in other parts of the country as well, it could become a precedent for them which is something they have to worry about while arguments were being made in the apex court

[00:13:09] the demolition issue also turned into a political slugfest with opposition parties criticising the anti-encroachment drive carried by the BJP controlled North MCD however what has been a striking feature in all the rhetoric regarding the demolition is the eerie absence of the Ahmadine Party government in Jahangir Puri

[00:13:26] since the communal violence took place on 16th April no ARP minister or legislator had visited Jahangir Puri till 21st April though the party's Supremo and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejwwal have condemned the issue on Twitter none of the party's popular faces like Manisa Sodhya,

[00:13:40] Raghav Chadda or Delhi MLA Aadishri has visited the demolition site and this was a frequent point brought up by the Congress delegation which visited the site on 21st April led by Congress General Secretary Ajay Makan and Delhi Congress Chief Anil Chaudhary

[00:13:54] the delegation reached the site of the demolition to meet the affected families which was cordoned off by security forces with traffic movement restricted into the heavily barricaded area and hours after the Congress delegation questioned the absence of ARP leaders or the areas MLA on the ground

[00:14:07] Ahmadine Party's Burari MLA Sanjeev Jah visited the spot on being asked why he had come late and not on Thursday when the demolition drive took place Jah said that quote-unquote I have been in touch with the people on phone we have also appealed for peace

[00:14:20] on being asked about Chief Minister Arvind Kejwwal's absence Jah claimed that the issue has been raised by Kejwwal with Home Minister Amit Shah the Queens reporters Ishwar Gholi and Samant Grover have extensively covered this demolition from the ground and you can find the reports on the Queens website

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