The Delhi High Court on Tuesday said that jhuggi jhopri (JJ) clusters are normally “born out of need” and unauthorised colonies are “born out of greed” while rejecting the petition of a colony for regularisation.
The court observed that legalising unauthorised colonies in the past has emboldened encroachers besides causing environmental degradation, traffic bottlenecks and spread of diseases such as malaria due to lack of drainage facilities.
“It is pertinent to mention that people who have set up these unauthorised colonies have neither paid full development charges to the civic authorities nor provided proper civic facilities like roads, sewerage, drainage, water and electricity, and as a result of this, diseases like malaria, diarrhoea and tuberculosis are common in Delhi,” said Justice Manmohan.
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‘Haphazard construction’
“It goes without saying that is extremely difficult if not impossible to provide adequate and proper sewage, drainage and roads after an unplanned colony has been constructed and occupied. After all, if the construction has been carried out in a haphazard manner without adhering to any scientific norms like grid pattern, how can a road with adequate width be subsequently provided,” he added.
The court made the observations while deciding in negative a petition filed by Utsav Vihar Residents Welfare Association seeking direction to the DDA to not encroach/ dispossess any member of the colony from its land.
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Regularisation plea
Utsav Vihar is an unauthorised colony which came up in 1992 on a private agricultural land of Karala village. It is among the colonies seeking regularisation by the Delhi government. Part of the colony falls within the alignment of the roads proposed by the Delhi Development Authority.
The Utsav Vihar RWA had come to the court with a plea not to dispossess it from the land and also sought a direction to the civic agency to proceed under the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013, in case any land forming part of the colony is required for any public purpose.
Land acquired by DDA
The DDA, on the other hand, said it had acquired the land in 2007 after affecting demolition and that the land falling in the alignment of 100 metre road has only about nine properties and the RWA cannot seek relief for the entire colony on that basis.
The court was also informed that the colony's representation dated September 22, 2012 for regularisation had been rejected on the ground that the land was required for construction of a public road.
The RWA was contending that the acquisition has lapsed with the DDA failing to take over the possession of the land.
The court, however, was of the view that affected persons would have to file individual writ petitions and “till the time the appropriate court does not declare that the acquisition proceeding has lapsed, this court is of the view that the right of DDA to the land cannot be questioned”.
On regularisation, the court said since the colony's representation stands rejected and not challenged for two years, no relief can be sought in relation to it.