Nuh demolitions: New high court bench to hear the matter

On August 7, a bench of justices Gurmeet Singh Sandhawalia and Harpreet Kaur Jeewan took suo motu of the demolitions in Nuh put a stay on the drive

A court hearing challenging the Haryana government’s demolition drive in Nuh district was reassigned to a new bench of the Punjab and Haryana high court on Thursday, days after the judges who first heard it asked the state government if its action in the communal violence-hit district was an act of “ethnic cleansing”.

Structures demolished in Nalhar village near Shaheed Hasan Khan Mewati Medical College by the Nuh district administration after communal violence. (Parveen Kumar/HT)

On August 7, a bench of justices Gurmeet Singh Sandhawalia and Harpreet Kaur Jeewan took suo motu of the state government’s demolitions in strife-torn Nuh, put a stay on the drive, and observed that the law-and-order situation was being “used as a ruse” to pull buildings without due process.

Now, a bench of justices Arun Palli and Jagmohan Bansal will hear the case on Friday.

Reasons for this reassignment were not immediately clear. The chief justice of a high court is its “master of roster” and assigns judges with cases.

According to procedure, after a judge or bench takes suo motu cognisance of a case, the matter is sent for consideration to the chief justice, who presides over the public interest litigation bench.

However, since the chief justice of Punjab and Haryana high court, justice Ravi Shankar Jha, is not holding court, the case has been listed before the bench of justices Palli and Bansal, where other PIL matters are also due for hearing on Friday.

During the hearing on Friday, the government will submit a report on the demolitions and clarify whether advance notices were given to the occupants of the buildings brought down during the drive.

After the clashes, around 1,200 properties were targeted by the authorities, almost all belonging to Muslims, on the grounds that they were encroachments or owned by those involved in the violence.

The demolition exercise began in Nuh on August 3, four days after communal violence erupted in the district on July 30. It continued till the morning of August 7, when the high court intervened and questioned the government over the manner it was being carried out.