Petitions in Gujarat high court challenge notifications declaring areas in 4 districts as ‘Disturbed Areas’

Source: indianexpress.com

Four petitions have been filed in the Gujarat High Court challenging the notifications declaring areas in four districts in the state as ‘disturbed areas’. Although the petitions were supposed to be heard Thursday, due to paucity of time it could not be taken up.

The four separate petitions challenging the notifications declaring areas in Ahmedabad, Surat, Vadodara and Bharuch respectively disturbed” have been moved by Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind (Gujarat).

The petitions challenge the notifications issued under the ambit of Section 3 of the Gujarat Prohibition of Transfer of Immovable Property and Provisions for Protection of Tenants from Eviction in Disturbed Areas Act, 1991. The petitioner has submitted that the notifications were issued although the condition of issuance such notification never existed.

“Though there have been no continuous and major incidences of riots or any continuous and major incidences of mob violence in Bharuch, Vadodara, Surat, Ahmedabad, and thereby public order is not disturbed for any substantial period of time, …impugned notifications are issued mechanically without any application of mind and/or without any justification and more particularly for all the areas and surrounding areas where there is any Muslim population,” the petitions read.

Any such declaration would imply that transactions that are otherwise legal and valid and where neither transferer or transferee have any grievance, such transfers are subjected under the Act of 1991.

An example of this contention can be seen in the case of Jankalyan Cooperative Housing Society (popularly known as Varsha flats) in Ahmedabad where transactions for 12 such properties were declared null and void by the deputy collector despite the transactions being consensual and no dispute arose in any other regard in the said transactions among the involved parties.

As mentioned in one of the petition that challenges the notification in Surat district, the state government’s revenue department issued a notification under Section 3 of the Act on August 1, 2016, declaring areas of the district as ‘disturbed’. The prescribed “substantial period” that the state government perceived was necessary to declare the areas to be so was five years, that is until July 31, 2021.

In the case of Vadodara district, many areas were declared as ‘disturbed areas’ via a notification issued under Section 3 of the Act on September 30, 2009 for a “substantial period” of five years, until September 30, 2014. A second notification was issued on the last day by the revenue department extending it to September 30, 2019. This second notification not only applied to the areas that had been declared as ‘disturbed areas’ in the 2009 notification, but also added more areas. This was done despite there being no incidences of any major and continuous violence in the Vadodara district.

All the matters, that have challenged the issuance of such notifications under Section 3 of the Act, are now expected to be heard next by a division bench on August 20. The state government is yet to reply to the contentions raised in the four petitions filed between March and June.