The Supreme Court on Wednesday stayed the demolition notice issued by the Nashik Municipal Corporation (NMC) against an alleged illegal structure built around Hazrat Satpeer Sayed Baba Dargah in the city.
In doing so, it sought to know from the Registrar General of the Bombay High Court whether the plea challenging the April 1 notice was refused to be listed and heard.
The Dargah Trust had approached the Bombay High Court with a writ petition on April 7, seeking direction to quash and set aside the NMC notice, which had said the structure in question had to be demolished within 15 days.
The petitioner apprehended that if the directions in the notice were not complied with by the Trust, the civic body would raze down the said structure on April 15.
On Tuesday night, a crowd clashed with the police after NMC officials initiated demolition of the structure.
On Wednesday, a Supreme Court bench of Justices P S Narsimha and Joymalya Bagchi was informed by senior advocate Navin Pahwa for the Trust that there was an urgency in the matter as the religious property in question, a decades-old dargah in the city’s Kathe Galli area, could be demolished anytime.
Pahwa had claimed that the Trust’s petition has been waiting to be listed since April 8, and the high court has declined to list the matter ever since.
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The petitioner argued that the writ plea was mentioned on April 8 before the high court through a praecipe (a written request for urgent hearing) seeking it to be listed on April 9 for interim relief, however, no urgent listing of the plea was allowed.
“We are unable to understand as to what transpired from April 9 till today (April 16),” the Supreme Court noted while staying the demolition notice. It posted the hearing on the Trust’s Special Leave Petition (SLP) to April 21.
“We have taken this extraordinary measure in view of the specific statement of the senior counsel that efforts were made every day for getting the case listed. We are unsure of the statement made and that the High Court would not have listed the case despite repeated requests,” the apex court noted.
“This is a serious statement and the learned counsel shall take and feel responsibility of the consequence of such a statement,” it added and sought a report from the high court registry about the listing of the Dargah’s plea.
© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd