Devotes of the city heaved a sigh of relief and thronged temples to offer prayers in delight as the Supreme Court on Friday restrained the State Government from demolishing three more shrines, which were viewed by the authorities as illegally constructed.
A Division Bench of the apex court comprising Justices Gyanasudha Mishra and Madan B lokur ordered to maintain status quo in respect of the religious structures and issued notices to the State Chief Secretary, Revenue Secretary and the Cuttack district Collector. The SC also ordered that the cases arising out of a single order of the Odisha High Court be jointly adjudicated on merit, informed petitioners’ counsel Prasanna Kumar Nanda.
The three religious structures which escaped bulldozers are Gayatree Shakti Peetha of Chahata, Ram Nigameswar Temple of Tulasipur and Baba Boothnath Shiridi Sai Temple of Khan Nagar. Another Bench of the SC comprising Justices BS Chowhan and Deepak Mishra had earlier slapped a stay on demolition of the Ananta Gopal Ashram at Mahanadi Vihar.
Nanda said the trustees of the religious structures had approached the SC challenging the January 6, 2011 order of the High Court in which the Government was asked to demolish all the religious structures which were constructed illegally on Government lands after the land settlement of 1987.
Contesting the HC order, Nanda argued that the SC in September 29, 2009 in a sweeping order had said that henceforth no constructions on Government lands would be allowed across the country and the district Collectors were directed to review all such illegal structures constructed prior to September 29, 2009 and dispose them case by case.
The Collectors were asked to find out whether the constructions on the Government lands were creating traffic problems, whether the Government lands were required for public purpose and whether the constructions are creating public nuisances or going against public interest, Nanda said.
Accordingly, the Collectors were also asked to examine the cases individually to regularise the lands in favour of the religious bodies wherever it was possible or to relocate the places of worships and then demolish the remaining structures.
Pursuant to this order, the Odisha Government in January 2010 came out with a scheme to regularise the lands in favour of the religious structures on payment by amending the Odisha Government land Settlement Act.
Subsequently, in the same year, the Chief Secretary made an affidavit in the Supreme Court informing that the Government had identified as many as 15,708 illegal structures on Government lands constructed prior to September 2009. Out of this, in 101 cases, the Government lands have been regularised in favour of the concerned trustees and four temples have been relocated while 18 other structures have been demolished, Nanda said.
However, after making such an affidavit, the Government never updated the Supreme Court about its status on illegal constructions further and the same facts were also not furnished before the High Court, Nanda alleged, saying that none of the 207 structures identified in Cuttack for demolition was ever given an opportunity to regularise the constructions.