Punjab and Haryana HC disposes of Chandigarh slum dwellers' resettlement plea

The Punjab and Haryana High Court has disposed of a petition filed by Sanjay Patel and others seeking resettlement after being removed from land owned by the Chandigarh Administration. The case, which has been in court for over a decade, is the latest in a long legal tussle between the petitioners and the authorities.
The High Court bench of Justice Anil Kshetarpal and Justice Aman Chaudhary passed the order on June 19. The petitioners had approached the court after their earlier attempt to enforce a 2016 court decision in their favour was rejected last year.
The dispute began in 2012, when the petitioners — slum residents — had gone to a civil court, challenging their removal from the land. In 2016, the court partly ruled in their favour, saying two things: first, they could only be evicted through legal means, and secondly, the government should consider their claim for resettlement under welfare policies for slum dwellers.
However, when the petitioners tried to act on this 2016 ruling by filing another case in 2019 to make the administration carry it out, the court rejected it in 2023. The judge in that case said the earlier order (called a decree) was limited in what it allowed, and the court couldn't go beyond what had already been stated.
In its June 19 judgment, the High Court agreed with that view. It noted that the land belongs to the Chandigarh Administration and that the petitioners' claims had already been looked into and turned down. The court said the earlier judgment had run its course and could not be stretched to give the petitioners further relief.
The petitioners had likely hoped the court would rely on a landmark 1985 Supreme Court judgment (Olga Tellis vs. Bombay Municipal Corporation), which held that eviction of slum dwellers without resettlement violated their right to life. But the High Court said that case didn't help in this situation because the Chandigarh Administration had already examined and rejected the petitioners' claims based on city development plans under the Chandigarh Master Plan.
While disposing of the case, the court said the petitioners were still free to challenge the latest order passed by the Chandigarh Administration on June 18, 2025, if they wish to pursue the matter further.
The case was argued by advocates Anil Mehta and Sukriti Kaur for the petitioners. The Chandigarh Administration was represented by senior standing counsel Amit Jhanji, along with Sumeet Jain and Himanshu Arora.

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