Action on those who let illicit buildings come up: LG’s office

Officials said they have, till Monday evening, “reclaimed” 4,180.6 square metres of land from Ladha Sarai village, but did not clarify how much encroachments remain

Officials who allowed illegal constructions to mushroom around the Mehrauli Archaeological Park will be held responsible, said officials in the Delhi lieutenant governor’s office, amid a large-scale demolition drive in the neighbourhood that has seen several buildings taken down and numerousfamilies left homeless.

A JCB demolishes structures amid heavy security in Mehrauli on Monday. (Vipin Kumar/HT Photo)

Officials said they have, till Monday evening, “reclaimed” 4,180.6 square metres of land from Ladha Sarai village, but did not clarify how much encroachments remain.

“Responsibility will be fixed,” said a senior official at LG VK Saxena’s office, when asked what action has been taken against officers in the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) and other government agencies for failing to protect government land and allowing illegal constructions in the area.

The demolition drive, which began on Friday, has been met with staunch resistance from residents, many of whom said they possessed legitimate registry papers for their flats (several of which were bought using home loans), even as they questioned authorities for letting such apartments spring up in the first place.

Officials of Delhi’s land-owning agency, however, have insisted that the action is in consonance with Delhi high court directions, which have, several times in the past few years ordered that encroached land be cleared. “A demarcation exercise, to identify the extent of unauthorised and illegal encroachment/construction, for the purpose of removing them, had been carried out as per direction of the Hon’ble High Court by the Revenue Department, representatives, in the presence of DDA and Waqf Board representatives in December 2021,” DDA said in a statement on February 11, adding that they pasted notices on severalhouses in the neighbourhood on December 12, 2022, ordering residents to leave their homes, which the agency said were built illegally on government land.

A senior DDA official said, “Action was not taken initially due to the pandemic. The process was initiated in September. The residents were informed about the demolition drive in December last year.”

The area is located metres away from the Mehrauli Archaeological Park, a key historical site that houses a bunch of monuments, including the Jamali Kamali Mosque and Rajon ki Baoli.

According to DDA officials, the agency legitimately owns most of Ladha Sarai village, which has seen a bulk of the demolition action. However, officials said illegal constructions have also come up on plots owned by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) and the Delhi Waqf Board.

Senior ASI officials said that they were not involved in the demolition drive. “The Park is spread over a vast area. While there are ASI-protected monuments within the Mehrauli Park, our monuments are located in areas where is no human habitation in the vicinity of the monument. The larger part of the Park is DDA land,” said Praveen Singh, superintending archaeologist, ASI Delhi Circle.

A spokesperson of the Delhi Waqf Board did not respond to request for comment.

A senior DDA official, who asked not to be named, said, “Large-scale constructions have taken place in the area, which belongs to DDA, as per the demarcation carried out by the Delhi government’s revenue department. There are 12-15 buildings which have got a stay order from court, but the rest will be cleared.There are several illegal constructions in the area, mainly in two lanes near the Archaeological Park.”

To be sure, on February 10, residents of some colonies filed four petitions against the demolition in the high court, which issued a status quo order on all of them; some more residents filed 10 petitions on February 13 in the high court, which issued a status quo order on seven of them.

However, crucially, officials of DDA (it was not immediately clear how much land is under DDA across Delhi) did not specifically answer three key questions: Why they waited more than year to act on the December 2021 orders of the high court; How and why the constructions were allowed to spring up in the first place; and why residents were issued registration documents for purportedly illegally built flats.

Residents have also said the DDA’s demarcation exercise, carried out from February 10 till now, was flawed and conducted without their participation.

“For 43 years, no one came to tell us that we were living illegally. A month ago, they put up notices saying we couldn’t live here anymore,” said Reena Bhatia, a 76-year-old woman, adding her husband had constructed the property in 1980.

Meanwhile, Ramesh Bidhuri, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) MP from south Delhi demanded a high-level enquiry into the matter and that action be taken against officials who allowed illegal constructions to take place.

“The residential areas are not part of the list of 1,700-plus unauthorised colonies that have been approved for regularisation by the Centre,” said Bidhuri.