Beneficiaries of Roshni Act move SC

As the J&K administration continues to make the names of the beneficiaries of the now-nullified Roshni Act public, a petition has been filed earlier than the Supreme Court by the beneficiaries claiming they “were not even heard by the J&K High Court as it passed the directions.”

“We were not given an opportunity of being heard. Our rights acquired under the Act enacted by a competent legislature were extinguished by the peremptory order. It’s unprecedented. Apart from our civil rights, it raises questions of distribution of power between the executive, judiciary and the legislature, which has implications all over the country,” former J&K Public Service Chairman Mohammad Shafi Pandit, whose identify was additionally made public, informed The Puucho.

A quantity of Roshni Act beneficiaries, together with Mr. Pandit, have filed a Special Leave Petition earlier than the SC as “authorised occupants and leaseholders of Nazool land.”

“The credibility of all the governments will be lost if the practice of retrospective annulment of laws, without saving the action taken, is allowed to prevail,” mentioned Mr. Pandit.

Roshni Act was handed by J&K legislature in 2001 to confer possession rights on occupants of State land to boost ₹25,000 crore for hydel initiatives, however solely ₹76 crore was collected. In 2018, the then Lieutenant Governor Satyapal Malik repealed the Act. Later, the High Court additionally scrapped the Act and directed the authorities to retrieve the land from the occupants.

“Grant of freehold rights is nothing outlandish… Even during the last one month, new schemes for online conversion of leasehold rights into freehold rights, at prescribed rates, have been announced by the NCR of Delhi, as well as Maharashtra, U.P. and M.P.,” Mr. Pandit mentioned.

According to the petition, individuals in lawful possession of State land, having established their dwelling with their households for a few years, have been dispossessed and disadvantaged of property vested in them by legislation with out discover and and not using a listening to as a consequence of the impugned judgment.

Former Finance Minister Haseeb Drabu, who can be among the many beneficiaries, mentioned in an article for an area newspaper that the property was handed right down to him on the idea of ancestral lineage. “In 1956, much before I was born, my grandfather purchased a house on four kanals of land in Gogji Bagh, Srinagar for his daughter, who, it so happens, is my mother.

“Under the Roshni Act passed by the State legislature and the scheme formulated by the government, it became an obligation for my mother to apply for conversion. Otherwise, under section 13 of the Act, she could have been evicted. So, whether one liked it or not, an application under the Roshni Act became inevitable. Surely, applying under and following legal obligation cannot be a corrupt practice?” he mentioned.

The J&K administration has named many politicians, businessmen and officers as “illegal land encroachers” in J&K.