: In a relief for over 400 families in the Maradu panchayat in Ernakulam, the Supreme Court on Monday put on hold its May 8 order to demolish their apartments for violating stringent coastal zone regulations.
A Vacation Bench of Justices Indira Banerjee and Ajay Rastogi froze the demolition for six weeks after the hapless residents pleaded that they were not even given an opportunity to be heard before the apex court passed the order to raze the five apartment blocks.
The Vacation Bench referred the petition, as per the residents' urging, to the Bench led by Justice Arun Mishra that passed the May 8 order for demolition in the first place.
The petition to review the May 8 order was filed by a group of house owners facing the bleak prospect of the demolition of their homes. In fact, the Justice Mishra Bench had ordered the State authorities to knock down the apartment blocks within a month. The deadline had passed.
Assuring that the review plea would be heard in July first week, the Vacation Bench ordered status quo till then.
The main ground of review petitioners was that the apex court-appointed three-member committee had not given them a proper hearing on the show-cause notice pertaining to violations and, therefore, the demolition order violated their fundamental right.
This plea by house owners immediately follows another petition by an affected builder alleging that the court was misled by the Kerala Coastal Zone Management Authority (KCZMA) into passing the May 8 order.
The three-member panel's report had concluded that the buildings fell within the CRZ-III limits.
The committee had stated that as per CRZ notification of 1991 and the Kerala Coastal Zone Management Plan 1996, the area in question came under CRZ III. As per the CRZ notification 1991, no construction was permitted within 200 meters from the costal line in CRZ III.
Holy Faith Builders, the affected company, however, had submitted that KCZMA hid a vital fact from the apex court - that is, a more recent Coastal Zone Management Plan (CZMP) prepared pursuant to a 2011 CRZ notification was approved by Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) on February 28, 2019 by which Maradu area of Ernakulam was categorised under CRZ-II.
“The apartment owners were not heard by the committee despite the direction of this court to hear all affected parties. All the 91 units in the petitioner’s (Holy Faith Builders) building have been sold. Thereafter tax is being paid by them every year. The committee did not issue notice to the owners of the apartments who are residing there. They are the affected parties, if an adverse order is passed in the matter,” the builder had submitted.
The May 8 judgment had blamed the “devastating effects” of unbridled construction activities in eco-sensitive areas with natural water flow. It said illegal constructions on river shores and “unscrupulous trespass” into the natural path of backwaters have led to natural calamities like those seen in the recent floods in Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Uttarakhand.
