UP Government’s Hobby Of Bulldozing Houses Questioned By The Supreme Court!

Supreme court of India just gave a landmark judgment that has held the country by its throat because it criticized and condemned Uttar Pradesh government’s decision of bulldozing a house as part of the road-widening project. The demolition of Manoj Tibrewal Aakash’s house in the Maharajganj district in 2019 is a case that has come to represent an alarming trend in government actions, which are now popularly referred to as “bulldozer justice.”

Bulldozer justice is the application of heavy machinery to the demolition of homes and property without due process, generally targeting people accused of, or otherwise connected to, crimes. This case has raised serious legal and human rights concerns about the violation of due process, unlawful demolitions, and the undermining of the rule of law. 

The Supreme Court’s Stern Rebuke

Manoj Tibrewal Aakash, one who was operated upon and whose house was demolished in 2019, is one such case that came before the Supreme Court with serious flaws in how Uttar Pradesh authorities handled the matter. The government had claimed the demolition was warranted because Aakash’s house encroached on public land, a common justification in such cases. But the court found that the procedure followed by the authorities was far from lawful.

The bench, which had Chief Justice DY Chandrachud and Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra, expressed serious displeasure with the demolition process.

The court stated that due process under the law was not followed by the authorities. Instead of providing proper legal notices, the government declared the eviction over loudspeakers, asking the residents to leave their homes without even giving them a day’s time to challenge the order. Chief Justice Chandrachud, in no uncertain terms, termed the action as “lawlessness” and criticized the government for going around the legal process. Justice Pardiwala also weighed in, pointing out that the law cannot be bypassed through force.

He argued that people cannot not be kicked out of their homes on the “beat of a drum” because that was the extent to which demolition was being used. Of greater concern was the report of the NHRC: the alleged encroachment was only 3.7 square meters. To destroy an entire house is a gross waste, they said.

The court order came clear: the act of demolition was an incident of “highhandedness” and against the principle of rule of law.

In this regard, it was ordered that an interim compensation of ₹25 lakhs was to be given by the Uttar Pradesh Government to the petitioner and an inquiry was conducted through the concerned officers, and disciplinary proceedings commenced accordingly. This ruling marked an important step toward reining on the government’s parade of bulldozing of properties without due process.

Unfortunately, the Tibrewal case is not an isolated affair. In Uttar Pradesh, such a trend has been rising in recent years – to knock down homes belonging to the accused with bulldozers. The tactic has emerged as a representative of an overall and more menacing trend of Indian governance – extrajudicial punishments for individual offenders, mainly based on religious or communal identities.

Of all the most controversial and characteristic practices of “bulldozer justice,” its blatant bias has been the one in demolitions, particularly in regard to communal riots. For example, homes and other property of the accused in the case of communal violence have been bulldozed in their entirety without any kind of due process and judicial oversight by the bulldozers. As one analyst pointed out, such acts punish and also serve as a component of a mechanism for social and political retribution.

On 18 September 2024, the Supreme Court responded to these consistent occurrences, one of them an eviction story reported from Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. In the Madhya Pradesh case, an entire inherited home of a family turned into dust because its inhabitants were claimed to have a connection to criminal offenders.

The Udaipur municipal corporation tore down a tenant’s house alleging it had been built on forest land. The demolition was questionable since the tenant’s 15-year-old son was arrested recently for stabbing his classmate from another community that had heightened communal tension in the region. The influential Muslim organisation, Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind moved a petition in the Supreme Court to bring an immediate halt to what it labeled as “bulldozer justice”.

Senior counsel Dushyant Dave said demolitions were but another name for retribution – the act of giving someone else the punishment as he pleaded on behalf of the petitioners. He appealed to the Supreme Court to deliver a final judgment against the misuse of bulldozers as tools of extrajudicial punishment.

The Supreme Court, while agreeing that demolitions can be carried out under municipal laws for the removal of illegal constructions, was questioning the way these laws were being applied. The Court noted that in most demolitions, there were apparently no considerations for due process and the rights of people whose homes were demolished.

The court also noted the worrying trend in demolitions targeted at those accused of having certain affiliations with certain communities or incidents, like communal riots and violence. The core problem that is associated with the issue of “bulldozer justice” is the weakening of the rule of law. The act of demolishing without due process violates the rights of an individual under law but attacks the very pillar of the justice system. Under India’s Constitution, due process is established with the right to a fair hearing and protection against any arbitrary action of the state.

On defense, the Uttar Pradesh government justified demolitions as necessary measures for eradicating unauthorized structures which intruded into public property.The state argues that, under municipal and urban planning laws, such activities are legal.
However, there are observations by the Supreme Court that the state only used these legalistic rationalizations to justify a move that was unlawful and vengeance-based. The Court has observed that even when a person is accused of committing a crime, the house cannot be demolished without observing the process of law laid down under the law.

Justice Gavai pointed during the hearings that how can anyone’s home demolish just because he’s an accused of a case? The law does not permit that. How pertinent to recall his rule to the book law, what he was for whatever and in whatever. Bringing down a person’s home is an extreme and irreversible act that may cause much social, economic, and psychological damage to the families concerned.

Accountability And Transparency Required

What is important here is that the Supreme Court should intervene in this process and take full transparency in the demolishing process. It was instructed to the Uttar Pradesh Government to establish whether demolitions had been carried out in unauthorised places and in that case, take appropriate disciplinary actions against them. In a case where either government or officers are charged for arbitrary destruction, this has to be dealt more strongly and transparently with some kind of framework in place.

One possible solution would be guidelines for demolitions, most especially when demolitions result from unauthorized structures. To this end, the court has shown a clear inclination to promulgate unitary guidelines that would indicate how illegal structures are marked and removed so as not to allow the municipal laws as a cover for extrajudicial activities. According to such guidelines, proper notice, hearings, and judicial review should precede demolitions, thus guarding the rights of those targeted.

Demolitions cannot be a collective punishment against a community. Such massive bulldozing of residential homes after communal carnage raises very serious questions regarding its justice. The Supreme Court commented while presenting the findings that the law enforcing agency must make sure such demolitions are conducted in compliance with the law and non-partisan without particularly targeting individuals.

Protecting The Rule Of Law

The Supreme Court’s intervention in the justice through bulldozing tactics of UP government marked an important step in ensuring the protection of the rule of law and citizens’ rights against the arbitrary use of state power.

Removing unauthorized constructions is within the right of the state. However, it must achieve this under the rule of law with due process -respect, transparency, and accountability.

The guidelines to be issued by the Court about demolitions will definitely be a critical tool whereby such actions are not taken in a haphazard or unjust manner. For the larger context, what the Court is doing reflects a need for broad discussion on how to make state actions balance with rights protection, so that the bulldozer never carries justice.