Courts should be sensitive when poor and deprived knock at its doors: Delhi High Court

Courts should be sensitive when the poor and deprived knock at its doors for justice, the Delhi High Court observed on Monday while directing the Central government to provide an alternative plot of land to five slum dwellers whose houses were demolished more than 14 years ago by the Indian Railways for expansion of New Delhi Railway Station.Justice C Hari Shankar said that this allotment would be subject to them providing documents to prove that they were residing in the slum around the station before November 30, 1998 – the cutoff date for entitlement under the relocation policy – and that they continued to reside in jhuggis even today."When the poor and deprived knock at the doors of the Court, the Court is required to be sensitive and sensitised in equal measure. The Court is required to remain alive to the fact that such litigants do not have access to exhaustive legal resources," the Court observed. It further said that slum dwellers do not stay in slums out of choice. "Their choice of residence is a last ditch effort at securing, for themselves, what the Constitution regards as an inalienable adjunct to the right to life under Article 21, viz. the right to shelter and a roof over their heads. As to whether the roof provides any shelter at all is, of course, another matter altogether,” the judgment said. .Justice Hari Shankar was dealing with a petition by five people claiming that they were residents of a Shahid Basti slum cluster near the New Delhi Railway Station since 1980s.In 2002-2003 as the Indian Railways was seeking to convert New Delhi Railway Station into a “world-class” railway station and to increase the number of platforms, they planned to acquire the slum land.The petitioners, therefore, relocated to the other side of the tracks situated at Lahori Gate and set up a slum colony there. The name of the colony remained Shahid Basti.However, further modernisation of the station required the authorities to clear that area around Lahori Gate as well for which the slum there was demolished on June 14, 2008.It was argued by the petitioners that under the Policy of Relocation of Slum Dwellers, their eviction could not have been undertaken without a prior survey..The railways argued that the relocation policy envisaged relocation only of residents of slums which had been set up on or before November 30, 1998 and the petitioners’ houses at Lahori Gate had been set up only in 2003.The requirement of conducting survey applies only to eligible slum clusters which were there before the cut-off date, the Railways said..However, the Court held that paragraph six of the policy, which provides the cut-off date and eligibility criteria for relocation has to be read as a whole.The judge said that the governing consideration in the minds of the framers of the policy was the length of jhuggi stay effectively meaning that if a dweller could establish that prior to the cut-off date he was living in a slum in Delhi, he would be regarded a beneficiary.That he may have shifted to some other slum cannot be a hindrance to this entitlement, the Court made it clear."Having themselves compelled the petitioners to set up a new jhuggi in 2003, the Railways cannot use that date as the basis to deny, to the petitioners, their right to relocation, even though they were residing in jhuggis elsewhere prior to the cut off date of 30th November 1998. This would be contrary to every known tenet of propriety and fair play,” Justice Hari Shankar further stated.Therefore, the Court concluded,“If the petitioners have been residents of the Shahid Basti jhuggi in Nabi Karim, prior to November 30, 1998, they would be entitled to the benefit of the Relocation Policy, even if the jhuggi at the Lahori Gate site, from which they were removed, came up only in 2003.”.Court’s observations on homeless and slum dwellersIn his 32-page judgement, Justice Hari Shankar said that when the poor and deprived knock at the doors of the Court, it is required to be sensitive, sensitised and alive to the fact that these litigants do not have access to exhaustive legal resources.“As one of the three coequal wings of the government, albeit functioning independent of, and uninfluenced by, the other two, the judiciary is required to remain as sensitive to the call of Articles 38 and 39 as the legislature, or the executive. Law, with all its legalese, is worth tinsel, if the underprivileged cannot get justice,” the judgment said.At the end of the day, our preambular goal is not law, but justice, he underscored. “At the end of the day, our preambular goal is not law, but justice. Law is but the instrument, the via media, as it were, to attain the ultimate goal of justice, and law which cannot aspire to justice is, therefore, not worth administering.”Justice Hari Shankar further said that the homeless, who live on pavements and inaccessible nooks and crannies of the city, do not live but merely exist. Life, as envisaged under Article 21 of the Constitution is unknown to them, he lamented.“Even a bare attempt at imagining how they live is, for us, peering out from our gilt-edged cocoons, cathartic. And so we prefer not to do so; as a result, these denizens of the dark continue to eke out their existence, not day by day, but often hour by hour, if not minute by minute,” he stated. The court said that alleviation of the plight of the poor and homeless is subsumed in each of these directive principles which, though they are not enforceable by Court, are nonetheless fundamental in the governance of the country, and mandatorily required to be borne in mind by the State while making laws.“Every statutory instrument, be it plenary or subordinate, is required to be so interpreted as to render it constitutional, rather than unconstitutional. Juxtaposed, these principles require all statutes, and instruments of state policy, to be interpreted in a manner which would harmonize with the directive principles of state policy, contained in Chapter IIIA of the Constitution of India,” the Court opined. .Advocates NS Dalal, Rachana Dalal and Alok Kumar appeared for the petitioners.Advocate Parvinder Chauhan and Sushil Dixit appeared for DUSIB.Advocate Geetanjali Mohan appeared for the railways..[Read Judgment]