New Delhi, January 11
The Supreme Court today issued notices to three colonisers who were allegedly granted licences by Punjab, Haryana and Union Territory of Chandigarh for building colonies around the city on protected green belt areas in violation of law.
The notices were issued by a Bench of Mr Justice N Santosh Hegde, Mr Justice S B Sinha and Mr Justice P K Balasubramanyan to Aamarnath Aggarwal Investments (AAI), Shivalik Developers and Promoters (SDP) and promoters of the Shivalik Vihar on a pending public interest litigation (PIL).
The court had issued the notices to the Centre and Punjab, Haryana and the UT Administration earlier.
The court had yesterday asked petitioner B Singh to make the colonisers as parties if he had a case against them that the Governments of Punjab, Haryana and Chandigarh had granted licences to them in violation of rules.
The main petition of Singh was for protecting the green belt around Chandigarh, which he said was being violated by the three governments which had acquired land from it for the purpose of urbanisation and then allotting the licences to private parties to build colonies on it.
Arguing the petition personally, he alleged that the Haryana Government while issued the licences for Amaravati Enclave for those of Shivalik Enclave and Shivalik Vihar were issued by the Punjab Government.
The governments of these states had first acquisitioned the land from the green belt area illegally in violation of the Chandigarh Periphery Act and then allowed the builders to raise unauthorised structures on it or allotted the land to them by way of giving licences for building colonies.
The governments of the two states and Union Territory were then regularising such structures, knowing well that under the Periphery Act, they did not have such powers, the petitioner alleged.
“Such licences issued are between 100 to 200 in number and are still being issued regularly,” the PIL said, adding that advertisements of two licences for Shivalik Enclave and Shivalik Vihar by the Punjab Government and the Haryana Government’s advertisement for Amaravati Enclave had recently appeared in newspapers.
On one hand these governments were allowing illegal colonies to come up around Chandigarh but on the other hand no progress had been made on the Ghaggar water supply project for the area, as envisaged in Chandigarh master plan, forcing the Administration to meet the water needs by drawing about 60 cusecs of water from Bhakra canal depriving the farmers of Haryana and Rajasthan of their irrigation needs, it said.
