Meet on Tughlaqabad action next week in Delhi

The court also said that it will order the personal appearance of top officials in the event of non-compliance with its directives

A day after the Delhi high court directed the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) to remove encroachments in the historical Tughlaqabad Fort within four weeks, the agency on Tuesday said it will call a meeting with stakeholders next week to discuss how the court’s instructions can be complied with.

The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) has ordered that 1,000 houses that have come up on the fort premises should be vacated. The locality is known as Bengali Colony. (Vipin Kumar/HT Photo)

Hearing pleas against rampant encroachment around the fort, a high court bench of chief justice Satish Chandra Sharma and justice Subramonium Prasad on Monday noted that in 2016, the Supreme Court had passed an order for the removal of encroachments in the area and the ASI has already pasted 1,248 notices on various structures within the monument.

The court also said that it will order the personal appearance of top officials, including the ASI director, Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) commissioners, the sub-divisional magistrate, and senior police officers in the event of non-compliance with its directives.

On Tuesday, Praveen Singh, the superintending archaeologist of the ASI’s Delhi circle, said they were still awaiting the high court’s order, but added that the agency will hold deliberations next week to ensure that its directions are complied with. “We will call a meeting in this regard to discuss how the compliance of the court order can be done,” said Singh.

According to section 19 of The Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act, 1958, the Centre may, by order, direct that any building constructed by any person within a protected area, in contravention of the provisions of the section, shall be removed within a specified period and, if the person refuses or fails to comply with the order, the collector may cause the building to be removed and the person shall be liable to pay the cost of such removal.

ASI officials familiar with the matter said, the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) in 1995 handed over an area of 2,661 bighas around the fort for maintenance. Over the years, the land was encroached upon, and a legal battle ensued after a public interest litigation (PIL) was lodged by SN Bhardwaj.

In February 2016, the Supreme Court declared the entire Tughlaqabad Fort as protected, and directed ASI to not allow any land-grabbing or encroachment there.

On November 24, 2022, the high court granted six weeks to ASI to remove the encroachments as the “last indulgence”. Subsequently, in January, the ASI posted demolition notices on more than a thousand houses in the area surrounding the fort at Bengali Colony in Chhuriya Mohalla, directing occupants to vacate the area within a 15-day window that concluded on January 26.

The deadline lapsed without any subsequent intervention on the ground from the concerned agencies.

ASI officials said the agency cannot undertake encroachment removal drives without the support of other agencies, including the police and DDA, due to which the matter was stuck in limbo. The agency also expressed before the Delhi high court on court its helplessness in removing the illegal structures on account of non-cooperation by other authorities.

HT reached out to the DDA, but officials declined to comment on the matter.

For residents living in the encroached area, there remains a sense of uncertainty. Arun Pal, a resident of Bengali Colony, said he has been living in the area for around 15 years, and at no point did the ASI or other agencies intervene to pronounce the land as protected land.

“In January, demolition notices were pasted. We don’t know what’s in store for us now. I have been living here for decades and we were never told that there was some dispute over the land,” he said.