Law Is Worth Tinsel If Underprivileged Can't Get Justice, Courts Need To Be Sensitized: Delhi High Court

While granting relief to five jhuggi dwellers in the city, the Delhi High Court has observed that when the poor and deprived knock at the doors of the Court, it is required to be sensitive and sensitised in equal measure.Justice C Hari Shankar further observed that the Court is required to remain alive to the fact that such litigants do not have access to exhaustive legal resources."Law, with all its legalese, is worth tinsel, if the underprivileged cannot get justice. At the end of the day, our preambular goal is not law, but justice with all its legalese, is worth tinsel, if the underprivileged cannot get justice."The Court granted relief to the five petitioners, residents of the Shahid Basti jhuggi in city's Nabi Karim area near the railway tracks or the foot over bridge at New Delhi Railway Station, who had filed the plea in 2008. The Court said that in case the petitioners were residents from a date prior to 30th November 1998, and had been continuously living in jhuggis till 14th June, 2008 when they were removed, and if they are still residing in jhuggis, they would be entitled to be relocated and granted plots in accordance with their entitlement as per the Relocation Policy of the Delhi Government.The alternative accommodation was however subject to the condition that the the petitioners will have to demonstrate to the authorities, that they were residents of the jhuggi in Nabi Karim from a date prior to the cut off date. "Given the length of time for which this petition has remained pending, this right would, however, enure to the petitioners‟ benefit only if they are able, additionally, satisfy the respondents that they continue, till date, to be jhuggi residents," it said. According to the relocation policy, the cut off date for beneficiaries was stated to be November 30, 1998. It provided that in order to verify the eligibility, Ration Cards issued prior the cut off date will be taken into account. It added that the name name of the allottee must also figure in the notify Voters'List as on the cut off date. Furthermore, it was provided that Jhuggis which came up after the cut off date will be removed without any alternative allotment by the project Executing Agency."The homeless, who people the pavements, the footpaths, and those inaccessible nooks and crannies of the city from where the teeming multitude prefer to avert their eyes, live on the fringes of existence. Indeed, they do not live, but merely exist; for life, with its myriad complexions and contours, envisaged by Article 21 of our Constitution, is unknown to them. Even a bare attempt at imagining how they live is, for us, peering out from our gilt-edged cocoons, cathartic. And so we prefer not to do so; as a result, these denizens of the dark continue to eke out their existence, not day by day, but often hour by hour, if not minute by minute," the Court observed. Referring to Article 38 and 39 of the Constitution of India, the Court said that alleviation of the plight of the poor and homeless is subsumed in the said directive principles which, though they are not enforceable by Court, but are fundamental in the governance of the country and mandatorily required to be borne in mind by the State while making laws. It added "The onus that the law places on the petitioner who petitions the Court, to positively establish every ingredient necessary to entitle him to relief has, in the case of the impecunious with meagre resources at hand, to be tempered with the conviction that, if the litigant is entitled to relief, relief should not be denied to him on technical considerations. As one of the three co- equal wings of the government, albeit functioning independent of, and uninfluenced by, the other two, the judiciary is required to remain as sensitive to the call of Articles 38 and 39 as the legislature, or the executive."The petitioners claimed to have been residing in the Shahid Basti jhuggi (slum) cluster since the 1980s. They claimed that their names were entered in the Electoral Register and that they were also exercising voting rights. They also claimed to be in possession of ration cards or other documents establishing their claim that, since the 1980s, they had been residing in the Shahid Basti slum colony.In 2002-2003, the Railways, who were seeking to convert the New Delhi Railway Station into a "world-class" railway station and in order to increase the number of platforms from 9 to 16, desired to acquire the land on which the petitioners were situated. The petitioners argued that they were shifted to another location on the opposite side of the tracks, situated at Lahori Gate, and set up a slum colony there.The Court was of the view that if a resident of the Lahori Gate jhuggi had been a jhuggi dweller, albeit on the other side of the tracks, from a period prior to the cut off date, it would be unjust, unfair and contrary to the avowed purpose and objective of the Relocation Policy to deny him the benefit of relocation. While...

Law Is Worth Tinsel If Underprivileged Can't Get Justice, Courts Need To Be Sensitized: Delhi High Court

Nupur Thapliyal

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