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| Govt's poll-time moratorium on demolition drive fails to protect unauthorized buildings | | | Early Times Report
KATRA, Apr 5: Snubbed by a Division Bench of the Jammu and Kashmir High Court, comprising Chief Justice M.M. Kumar and Justice Muzaffar Hussain Attar, on last Monday, for shielding some hoteliers under the excuse of 'Model Code of Conduct', the Omar Abdullah government today resumed the process of sealing the unauthorized commercial buildings at Katra, the base camp of Mata Vaishno Devi shrine pilgrimage.
Deputy Commissioner of Reasi Shahid Iqbal supervised the sealing operation of 28 buildings marked as illegal and unauthorized. Officials said that 17 more of such structures would be sealed on Sunday under the supervision of DFO Reasi and other officers.
While a group of the hoteliers had failed to get relief from Supreme Court and six litigants were fined by High Court for misleading the apex court with wrong facts and the sealing process was underway in February, the Omar Abdullah government pushed a moratorium through Legislature, proscribing sealing and demolition of the constructions, that had come up in violation of Master Plan and other laws in Katra, Jammu and Srinagar municipal limits. 'The Jammu and Kashmir Civic Laws [Special Provisions] Act, 2014', came into force on March 5 - exactly the day Lok Sabha elections were announced by Election Commission of India. It froze the process till March 31, 2015.
On Monday, when some PIL petitioners were praying for continuation of the demolition drive, the amicus curie R.K. Gupta contended that the moratorium law had been brought in "only to protect and benefit some big businessmen and hoteliers around the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections". Chief Justice remarked more than once in the open court that the moratorium law seemed to have been made "to benefit vested interests".
Mr Justice Attar disagreed with the government's advocate Seema Shekhar that the moratorium was "consequent upon the guidelines of Model Code of Conduct from Election Commission of India". He observed that by Mrs Shekhar's averment, the government could find it easy to also freeze the Ranbir Penal Code and Forest Act and encourage the criminals and timber smugglers to enjoy a field day during the election time. "There can be no such guidelines from Election Commission. Nobody stops the Government from discharging its duty during the elections", Justice Attar remarked. Later the Bench asked the PIL petitioner to challenge the constitutional legality of the government's moratorium law separately.
"The question whether such a legislation has been enacted with the objective of taking away the base of a judgment and order of the court is yet to be decided as counsels for the petitioners have requested for some time to challenge the constitutional validity of the Act", said the Bench in its order. It directed Chief Secretary and Deputy Commissioners of Jammu, Reasi and Srinagar to proceed against the Master Plan violations which were exempted from protection under sections 5 of the moratorium law.
It was clarified that the unauthorized buildings which were incomplete on March 5, 2014, or had been completed in violation of other laws like agriculture and land use on public land, public roads and utilities or did not conform with the safety standards set up by the government, as also the unauthorized structures that had come up in breach of the May 29, 2013, order of DC Reasi at Katra, were not covered under the moratorium. Even as the action by the DCs of Jammu and Srinagar is still awaited, the authorities today resumed the sealing operation at Katra. |
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