M A I N   N E W S

Enemy Property Bill may be passed today
Faraz Ahmad
Tribune News Service

New Delhi, August 29
The Enemy Property (Amendment and Validation) Bill, 2010, hanging fire for more than a month despite the best efforts of Home Minister P Chidambaram, may finally see the light of the day tomorrow, hopefully with the BJP support.

The Bill has become a bone of contention between Muslim MPs, who have been demanding its total withdrawal, and BJP MPs, who, like Chidambaram, would like to take all properties earmarked as “enemy properties” under the Custodian, out of judicial purview.

Sources said the government was confident of the passage of the Bill tomorrow as it had now amended the original Bill whereby Muslims whose properties had been under occupation for decades, might secure their retrieval through courts, but would not be allowed to evict the present occupants.

At stake are 2,186 prized properties all over the country, declared as “enemy property” because their original owners are believed to have migrated to Pakistan. These properties were then taken over by the Custodian, which, in turn, passed these on to others.

On the other hand, Muslims claim that there have been a number of cases in which the actual owners of such properties are very much in India, but these properties have been wrongly taken over by the Custodian and are now under illegal occupation.

Properties belonging to the erstwhile Raja of Mehmoodabad Ahmad Ali Khan, a prominent leader of Muslim League of yesteryears who migrated to Pakistan leaving behind around 1,100 properties, including posh Metropole Hotel at Nainital, Butler Palace and half of Hazartgunj in Lucknow and such other bungalows and buildings in different parts of Uttar Pradesh, worth several hundred crores, have become the reference point for the debate.

The Raja’s son and heir Sulaiman Mian, an Indian national and one-time MLA in UP, has been fighting a legal battle against the Custodian claiming that he was the rightful heir to these properties and since he and his mother had never migrated to Pakistan, the state had no business to declare their properties as “enemy property”.

After a protracted legal battle, the Supreme Court accepted Sulaiman Mian’s contention and his right to inherit all these properties. But this got the goat of Home Minister P Chidambaram, who had appeared in the Supreme Court on behalf of one of the illegal occupants of Sulaiman Mian’s properties. It is a different matter that it was later established that this distant relative of Sulaiman Mian had forged documents to stake claim to the property.

But Chidambaram found strange bedfellows in his endeavour to save the current occupants of the Raja’s properties, namely Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitely and another BJP MP Ram Jethmalani. All three leading legal practitioners had represented different occupants of these properties. Jaitely and Jethmalani appeared in the Supreme Court for the tenants of the Hazratgunj buildings.

The Bill, when introduced on August 2, sought to amend the Enemy Property Act, 1968, to enable the Custodian to retain all such properties and take these out of the purview of any judicial review. As this was going to adversely affect a large number of Muslims, they got agitated. Therefore, Muslim MPs, cutting across party lines, including two Muslim MPs of the BJP, got together with Minority Affairs Minister Salman Khursheed, Health and Family Welfare Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad and others to block the passage of the Bill.

They first met Chidambaram, who did not relent, and then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who asked Chidambaram, to drop the Bill. But Chidambaram dug in his heels and, therefore, it came up for discussion several times in the Lok Sabha, but got deferred every time, including Friday.

Eventually, Chidambaram attempted to slightly tone down the Bill. But this did not satisfy the Muslims because while it upheld Sulaiman Mian’s right to reclaim his properties, it blocked others from getting the same relief. Nor was Jaitely happy. He wanted to protect interests of his clients, the present occupants of Hazratgunj buildings.

And Ahluwalia virtually admitted this, saying, “We want the Bill to remain in its original form and if at all any amendment has to be made, it should ensure that the tenants remained unaffected by this.”

But Chidambaram did not give up. He spoke to Sushma and Ahluwalia again on Friday as also to Muslim MPs and is now confident that the will be passed tomorrow.