5 Surat engineers suspended after Gujarat HC questions demolition of 100 houses

Five Surat Municipal Corporation engineers suspended after Gujarat High Court questioned the demolition of over 100 Nasirnagar homes without formal orders.

Published on: Jul 1, 2026, 21:02:21 IST

By Maulik Pathak, Ahmedabad

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Five Surat Municipal Corporation engineers were suspended in Surat on Wednesday after the Gujarat High Court pulled up the authorities for the controversial demolition of over 100 houses in the city’s Nasirnagar area without any formal orders.

Five civic engineers suspended after Gujarat High Court questioned how over 100 houses in Surat’s Nasirnagar were demolished without notices.

The demolition, carried out over three days from May 30 to June 1, razed more than 100 houses in Nasirnagar, a slum settlement in Surat’s Ved Darwaja area. When questions were initially raised about the demolition, no government agency came forward to claim responsibility.

Twenty-six residents approached the high court against the demolitions carried out without notice to the people. During the hearing on June 29, justice Nikhil Kariel said that police protection had been sought only for land demarcation and that the police personnel present at the site should have intervened when the agency began demolishing houses.

The bench also questioned the role of senior police officers in the entire episode and issued a notice to builder Sanjay Lakhani over allegations that the demolition was carried out to benefit a project linked to him.

The five municipal officials who have been suspended are executive engineer Sujalkumar Prajapati, executive engineer JR Jivanramjiwala, deputy engineer Arpit Parmar, assistant engineer Mohsin Gadhiya, and junior engineer Nareshkumar Galchar, all attached to the corporation’s civil wing, according to an official SMC statement.

According to the SMC, the officials were suspended based on the findings of a fact-finding committee constituted to examine the demolition. The corporation said the suspension was necessary to ensure that the departmental inquiry was conducted in a fair and impartial manner.

In a written reply submitted to the Gujarat High Court, municipal commissioner M. Nagarajan stated that the SMC had not issued any demolition orders.

Nagarajan said the officials were present at the site only for land demarcation related to a long-pending dispute on privately owned land. SMC standing committee chairman Rajan Patel also took a similar position during proceedings, saying police deployment was requested solely for the demarcation exercise.

The matter is scheduled to be heard again by the Gujarat High Court on July 2, when the corporation is expected to present the findings of its fact-finding committee.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Maulik Pathak
He is an Ahmedabad-based journalist with more than two decades of experience. His career spans business journalism and general news, with reporting across politics, crime, governance, public policy, business, industry, infrastructure, energy, ports, aviation, the environment, wildlife and social issues. He began his career in feature writing before moving into business journalism, reporting on companies and sectors including energy, infrastructure, pharmaceuticals, automobiles and real estate. Over the years, his work expanded to politics, courts, crime, public policy, civic affairs, the environment and wildlife. His reporting has taken him from government offices and courtrooms to factory floors, ports, forests and remote villages, covering stories that range from industrial investments and financial markets to elections, conservation and issues affecting everyday life. While many assignments demand the pace of the daily news cycle, others require sustained reporting over months and years to follow developments beyond the headlines. He started his journalism career with the Asian Age in Ahmedabad in 2002 as a feature writer and sub-editor. Since 2022, he has been working with Hindustan Times. Earlier, he worked with Business Standard, DNA, The Economic Times, Mint and The Times of India. His longest stint was with Mint, where he spent more than eight years reporting across multiple beats. During his career, he has worked in both reporting and editing roles, contributing to page planning, local editions and special editorial projects as newsrooms evolved from print-first operations to digital publishing. Early in his career, he also worked on media and documentary projects with an NGO and as a copywriter at a communications agency before returning to journalism. Away from work, he sometimes makes time for a pair of binoculars, table tennis, cinema and the occasional poem.Read More

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