Chandigarh, January 4: Applying brakes to the demolition drive being carried out in Sector 19 by the local Municipal Corporation less than a month after the Punjab and Haryana High Court frowned upon encroachments in front of houses, a Vacation Bench today stayed the same.
The Vacation Bench of Justice Amit Rawal and Justice Arun Kumar Tyagi made it clear that the drive would not be undertaken till the next date of hearing and till the Chandigarh Administration and the Municipal Corporation completed the task of preparing a draft parking policy, completed the survey and removed encroachments from parking lots.
The Bench added that it was sanguine about the fact that the Chandigarh Administration, in order to remove encroachments, would endeavour to undertake the task of completion of the draft parking policy as early as possible.
The directions came on an appeal filed by the Residents Welfare Association of Sector 19-C (government houses) challenging the order, dated December 21, whereby a Single
Judge directed the official respondents to remove encroachments on the road before submitting a status report by January 10.
Appearing before the Bench, counsel for the petitioner-association Gaurav Rana submitted that the demolition drive was undertaken from Sector 19 despite the fact that the draft parking policy was still in progress.
Rana submitted that the impugned order seriously affected the Residents Welfare Association as allottees of government houses were using the vacant space for parking their vehicles, much less, for security of their valuable items and their life. Describing the impugned order “highly vague”, the counsel added that it did not point out which “encroachments are illegal”. The UT and the MC had not carried out any survey, as undertaken in the impugned order, and had not issued individual notices to residents specifying the encroachments.
Besides, a specific time frame had not been provided to residents to either rectify or remove the encroachments, if any. “The order has resulted in a situation of chaos for residents as without any notices, a demolition drive was initiated on January 2 without giving any opportunity of hearing to anybody…” “The alleged encroachments are being removed in a hasty manner at the cost of residents just to show to this court that the official respondents are actively doing their part without taking into consideration the process of law,” he averred.
