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`No need to panic'

Sujay Mehdudia

No violation of law, says Ministry The Ministry also concerned over the assurance given by Solicitor-General

NEW DELHI: Stating that there was no need to panic over the stern observations made by the Supreme Court on Monday during the brief hearing on the sealing and demolition case, the Union Urban Development Ministry has said that there was no violation of the law while issuing the latest notification declaring certain areas in various categories for mixed land and commercial use.

According to highly placed sources, the Ministry was also concerned over the intervention and subsequent assurance given by Solicitor-General G.E. Vahanvati to the Supreme Court that the new notification would not be put in place till it was cleared by the Court. "The Solicitor-General was not given any such briefing and the Union Law Ministry had been apprised of the whole case and the latest position. There is no reason why the Solicitor-General made such a submission before the court," said a senior official of the Ministry.

It is understood that a delegation of traders also met Union Minister of Urban Development Jaipal Reddy and Union Minister of State for Urban Development Ajay Maken and sought to know the exact position of the Government on the latest notification. Assuring the traders that everything needful was being done to give relief to the affected people, it is understood that officials present at the meeting informed that while the Court order for sealing from September 16 came on August 10, the notification on mixed land and commercial use had already been issued on July 21.

In fact, it is pointed out, the Delhi Development Authority and the Union Development Ministry have followed the due process of law while issuing the new notification amending the Master Plan for Delhi 2001. Not only did it provide the required one-month time for filing of objections and suggestions on the proposed amendments but also after the expiry of the one-month period the DDA's Board of Inquiry went through the objections and suggestion for the next fortnight and after considering all aspects of the feedback got on the issue a final notification was issued on September 7 by the Ministry.

Further, officials added that after the notification, the MCD notified the roads surveyed for mixed land and commercial use and recommended that the Delhi Government without any delay notify the same. It was on September 15 that the Delhi Government notified around 2000 roads and streets under the mixed land use and commercial category.

However, officials feel that what messed up the whole exercise was the manner in which the political leadership in the Municipal Corporation of Delhi handled the entire issue of notifying new roads. Not only were a large number of roads and patches included in the notified list without conducting any proper survey, there were instances where Councillors along with the traders and residents of their areas lined up outside Town Hall to lobby for inclusion of their small patches in the mixed land use or commercial category casting a cloud of suspicion over the whole exercise.

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