Plot thickens as Centre takes on Delhi HC

A confrontation is brewing during on-going hearings of a public interest litigation filed by the Delhi High Court Bar Association. While the ministry has questioned further allotment of land, the petitioners, during oral arguments, have demanded an additional 20 acres in the Kaka Nagar area for various expansion projects of the High Court.

Interestingly, this demand of 20 acres comes at a time when 2.8 acres is finally being leveled for use of the High Court and for which eight C1 and C-11 type Government bungalows and an NDMC school have recently been demolished in the Bapa Nagar area. Two senior bureaucrats (a retired special secretary and a deputy director general in the DRI), who received eviction orders before the Bapa Nagar demolitions, filed applications during the PIL case hearings pleading for an extension of their allotments, but were not heeded to.

The members of the Bar Association, however, say they may not oblige the UD Ministry. Association Secretary D.K. Sharma told The Indian Express that details of the current allotment have previously been submitted to the government and that they would not give up their demand for an additional 20 acres that’s needed for the construction of additional lawyers chambers, consultation rooms, a library, a new parking lot and crèche.

“We have already submitted a proposal for the construction of these facilities in a new High Court campus proposed to be built in the Kaka Nagar area. The existing government bungalows located in the land can be demolished in batches specially since they are crumbling anyways. The first block earmarked by us has 18 bungalows,” said the DHCBA secretary.

The bunch of petitions filed in the case reveal that the Delhi High Court had also recently demanded 7 additional acres for a new record room (with a capacity for 20 lakh files) but this too had been frowned upon by the UD Ministry. Things came to a head when yet another demand for an acre was made, this time, for construction of an electric sub-station in Bapa Nagar. This matter has apparently been resolved with the UD Ministry recommending that the sub-station be located in the extra 2.8 acres given to the High Court.

... contd.