Great injustice is being meted out to a large number of citizens by several state governments countrywide by demolition of homes and shops — especially of the Muslim minority community — by bulldozers called in at short notice. The flimsy excuse proffered for the heart-rending razing of painfully accumulated property of bottom-of-pyramid citizens is that they have been unauthorizedly constructed on government and/or corporate land. On August 7, the Punjab & Haryana high court restrained the Haryana government from damaging or destroying the property of any citizens in Nuh village which recently witnessed communal clashes, without a high court order.

This court judgement was issued after communal clashes erupted on July 31 in Nuh. Immediately thereafter, 250 shops and shanty homes in Muslim majority areas of Nuh were demolished by bulldozers deployed by Haryana’s BJP government because they had allegedly been constructed on railway land.

Similarly on earlier occasions, Uttar Pradesh’s BJP government had bulldozed homes and shops of minority citizens in Prayagraj because they allegedly fomented rioting and attacks on Hindu religious processions. Court orders staying these demolitions are invariably too weak and too late.

Inexplicably, the legal doctrine of ‘estoppel’, commonly applied in the UK and perhaps all Common Law governed countries of the Commonwealth, is not invoked to stay the demolition of residential and business properties of slum dwellers, the prime targets of bulldozer justice. Simply stated, the doctrine posits that when government or private property is encroached upon, it is the legal duty of the owner thereof to protest and obtain early stage stay orders against further construction. If property owners fail to protest adverse possession of their land and property within reasonable time, their title is forfeit or retainable on below-market value sums which the court may decree. Curiously, this well-established common-sense principle of law seems alien to bench and bar in India.

The judiciary and legal profession need to bring themselves up to speed to apply this well-established principle of the law of equity. Moreover, the courts also need to take judicial notice of the common practice of the neta-babu brotherhood issuing fake title papers to ill-educated rural migrants, encouraging them to build homes and business premises on public land in exchange for substantial bribes from meagre savings. Thus bottom-of-pyramid citizens are hit by a double whammy when their homes and shops are bulldozed by unmindful and/or communally prejudiced governments many years — often decades — later.

This situation is untenable. The victims of bulldozer injustice are entitled to compensation for destroyed and/or damaged property. Simultaneously, bar and bench in this benighted republic need to wake from their inertia and innovate citizen-friendly legal and procedural laws to protect the property and lives of citizens at the bottom of the country’s iniquitous pyramid.