Delhi HC dismisses Yamuna Bazar residents’ plea challenging eviction

Delhi High Court dismissed a petition against eviction notices for 310 families in Yamuna Bazar, citing lack of proper authorization from residents.

The Delhi High Court on Tuesday dismissed a petition challenging eviction notices issued by the Delhi Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) to 310 families residing in the centuries-old Yamuna Bazar Ghat area near Kashmere Gate, holding that the plea was not maintainable.

Delhi HC dismisses Yamuna Bazar residents’ plea challenging eviction

“I can’t help you in the absence of proper locus. We do not want to get into all this… You have to first cross the hurdle of locus,” the court remarked.

A bench led by Justice Purushaindra Kumar Kaurav observed that the petition filed by the Yamuna Bazar Residents Welfare Association lacked proper authorisation. It in its order said, “A perusal of the petition does not show who are the members of Yamuna Bazar Resident Welfare Association and there is no binding affidavit in which they have stated that they are ready to bear the consequences. In the absence of their being a proper authorisation by the members and their binding affidavit to bear the consequences of the instant writ petition, the court is not inclined to entertain the writ petition. It is not a PIL, but has been filed by the association at the instance of local residents. In the absence of authorisation, the petition is not maintainable. They are at liberty to file a proper petition with the authorisation of the residents.”

The bench also declined to restrain authorities from taking coercive action against the residents for seven days. “No meanwhile. You should have come with a proper locus,” it said.

This came after counsel for the association urged court to restrain the authorities from taking coercive action against the residents for seven days, submitting that the demolition drive was scheduled for Wednesday, while the association filed a petition containing all the details sought by it.

The DDMA on May 7 had issued eviction notices to 310 families giving them 15 days to vacate the area. The notice described the settlement as a “illegal encroachment” of the Yamuna floodplain in the O-Zone area and cited recurring flood risk as grounds for eviction. Residents, however, claimed that no formal survey of the area, where they have been living for generations, has been carried out and the move could impact their lives and livelihoods.

In a series of notices pasted to the walls and doors and circulated through the narrow lanes of the riverfront colony, the DDMA cited Section 34 of the Disaster Management Act, 2005. It said the cluster face annual inundation whenever the Yamuna floods and continued occupation of the floodplain “constitutes a potential disaster risk”.

There are 32 ghats in the area with around 310 residential structures, housing 1,100 people.

In their petition, the residents had asserted that the notices proceeded on a generalized assumptions and speculative apprehensions without disclosing any scientific flood-risk assessment, engineering report, structural danger analysis, hazard classification or any concrete material demonstrating existence of a “threatening disaster situation” as contemplated under the Disaster Management Act, 2005.

It added that the Ghats in question are not recent encroachments or temporary jhuggi clusters as projected in the impugned notice.

“The Yamuna Ghats form part of the historical riverfront landscape of Shahjahanabad and have continuously existed as religious, ritualistic and cultural spaces associated with Nigam Bodh Ghat and the Yamuna river for generations,” the petition stated.

The structures situated at Yamuna Ghats No 2 to 32, are permanent and semi permanent masonry structures made of brick, stone and cement and are not temporary flood-vulnerable shanties. “Despite recurring seasonal flooding over several decades, the Respondents have failed to disclose even a single verified instance involving collapse of structures, mass casualty, loss of human life, destruction of public infrastructure or any flood- related public disaster attributable to occupation of the said Ghat,” the petition further added.