Digging up due process: SC order on 'bulldozer justice' restores equity

Given the increasingly febrile nature of the bulldozer justice issue and the ambit of its application, the sooner the Court issues clear guidelines on the legal premises of this practice, the better

The Supreme Court’s latest interim order on a batch of petitions stating that no demolition should take place in the country without its express permission for the next 15 days restores the criticality of due process in the Indian justice system. Warning against “grandstanding” and “glorification” of this practice by political leaderships, the Supreme Court Bench specified that it had passed the direction invoking its special powers under Article 142 of the Constitution. Article 142 empowers the Supreme Court to pass any decree or order necessary for doing complete justice in a matter pending before it. In doing so, the two-judge Bench of Justice B R Gavai and Justice K V Viswanathan asserted its powers over the executive for acts that were deemed violating the ethos of the Constitution. The apex court clarified the order would not be applicable to encroachment on public roads, footpaths, railway lines, and other public property.

The apex court’s forthright expression of disapprobation against demolitions is significant because it comes at a time when freelance vigilante justice has acquired a high degree of acceptability within sections of Indian society. The order calls into question the basic legality of the demolitions because there is no provision in Indian law that prescribes demolishing property as a punitive measure. This is an important signal to send to state bureaucracies and political leaders. “Bulldozer justice” has been extremely destructive, rendering people homeless and destroying small businesses, and eroding trust in the rule of law, such as it is. Calculations by the Delhi-based non-governmental organisation Housing and Land Rights Network shows that 153,820 homes were demolished in 2022 and 2023, displacing over 700,000 people. Some 59 per cent of these demolitions were undertaken on the pretext of slum clearance or urban beautification.

But punitive demolitions have been a favoured and blunt instrument of state administrations too — in Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Haryana — and have often followed riots and similar law and order situations. The Supreme Court has condemned demolitions of both types. The solicitor general of India has argued that some demolitions were conducted in 2024, two years after notices were sent to the people concerned and that they had committed certain offences in the interim period, and that the demolitions and the crimes were not connected. The Bench, however, questioned the sudden demolition of the properties in 2024, suggesting that the two issues were not necessarily unrelated.

The communal element associated with several demolitions has been an issue that petitioners had raised before the apex court, especially in Prayagraj and Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh; Nuh in Haryana; Jahangirpuri in Delhi; and Jirpur village in Madhya Pradesh. They have argued that demolitions typically targeted the minority community following riots. Indeed, the force of their arguments prompted the solicitor general to protest that a narrative of communal targeting was being falsely created. The judges have countered that “outside noise” would not distract them. But given the increasingly febrile nature of the issue of bulldozer justice and the ambit of its application, the sooner the Supreme Court issues clear guidelines on the legal premises of this practice, the better.