‘Delhi is in an utter mess’: Supreme Court rebukes Centre on Master Plan delay
In its order made available on Monday, the Supreme Court on October 18 pulled up the authorities for the delay in notifying the Master Plan for Delhi 2041
NEW DELHI: Delhi is in an utter mess and the authorities are keeping everything in limbo to give themselves unreasonable powers, the Supreme Court said last week, expressing its displeasure at the delay in notifying the Master Plan for Delhi (MPD) 2041.
“We are surprised that the Government does not take steps to prevent harassment of citizens. An utter mess has been made in the city and the public authorities are not willing to remove this mess,” the bench of justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Sudhanshu Dhulia said in its order dated October 18. The order, in which the bench directed the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) to de-seal two premises, was uploaded on the Supreme Court’s website, on Monday
“The whole problem in the city is that public authorities are keeping everything in limbo to give themselves unreasonable powers,” the bench said, underlining that the central government had committed to publish the Master Plan by April 30, 2023, but was already five months late.
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“You don’t provide the Master Plan while you continue to harass citizens,” the bench said in its observations while considering two applications that sought orders to de-seal two premises on Rajesh Pilot Marg and Tilak Marg.
The court-appointed judicial committee, comprising two retired high court judges, had in August last year approved the de-sealing of the premises on Rajesh Pilot Marg while the monitoring committee comprising experts assisting the court on sealing of unauthorised constructions recommended de-sealing the other premises on Tilak Marg.
NDMC opposed the two orders that compelled the occupants to approach the top court.
During previous hearings, the court had rued that non-adherence of the law was a problem in Delhi due to the absence of new MPD and a blanket legal cover to all unauthorised constructions under the National Capital Territory of Delhi Laws (Special Provisions) Second Amendment Bill, 2021 which granted protection from demolition, sealing, etc for certain kinds of unauthorised constructions for three years. Such protections have been extended from time to time, initially through ordinances and later by laws passed in 2007, 2009, 2014 and 2017.
The central government and the Delhi Development Authority in September last year committed to finalising the MPD-2041 by January 2023 after the bench asked the government to set a deadline for itself. The top court gave the govenment three more months over its January deadline and recorded the April 30 deadline. “We expect these dates to be strictly adhered to as the matter cannot remain in limbo for ad infinitum period of time. We are sure that final Master Plan would be published on or before April 30, 2023,” the bench said last year.
In its order last week, the Supreme Court warned the NDMC. “We have put counsel for the NDMC to notice that if such acts are repeated in future or if the orders (of judicial committee) are not implemented, we have no option but to have the concerned officers before the Court and we hope they will not give us an occasion to do so.”
At its September hearing last year, the court constituted a judicial committee comprising former chief justice of Bombay high court justice (retd) Pradeep Nandrajog and former Delhi high court judge, justice (retd) GS Sistani to deal with applications filed by owners and occupiers of premises sealed on orders of the court-appointed monitoring committee. Earlier, all these applications used to be filed directly to the Supreme Court. As applications piled up, the court found the situation unmanageable and decided to have a judicial authority to consider the objections and take a call if the order of sealing should be continued or set aside. The final order could be challenged before the top court.
Besides sealing, the judicial committee’s scope was extended to cover cases of regularization, levy of penalty or conversion charges, demolition of unauthorized constructions and removal of encroachments. It was further empowered to examine aspects of nature of allotment, change of allotment policy, prevalent norms on what is permissible and the nature of violation before passing orders.
In the present applications considered by the top court, one applicant was Parijat Sinha whose property at Sagar Apartments, Tilak Marg was ordered to be de-sealed while the other application was by a firm called Carvanserai Limited. In the latter case, the judicial committee passed an order on August 22 to de-seal while the Tilak Marg premises was ordered de-sealing by monitoring committee on January 21.
