Hyderabad: The Telangana High Court said on Monday that there is a vast difference between the words of the state government and its action in protecting and conserving heritage buildings.
The court told the government to take a more serious approach rather than telling the court “embroidered” stories to defend its decision to remove the heritage list which included Errum Manzil and 136 other heritage structures.
A division bench comprising Chief Justice Raghavendra Singh Chauhan and Justice Shameem Akhter was hearing PILs and petitions on Monday challenging the proposed demolition of Errum Manzil to construct the legislature complex.
The bench observed that the state had abandoned the protection of heritage buildings, which ought to be protected under the Cons-titution and several Acts.
The bench said the state government was giving out reasons as an afterthought against what it had actually determined while deleting Regulation 13 of the Hyderabad Urban Development Authority Zoning Regulations 1981. This resulted in the deletion of the list consisting of heritage structures to be protected and conserved,
Earlier, additional advocate general J. Ramachandra Rao explai-ned that Regulation 13 was added in 1995 by the then government by issuing a government order. The Telangana state government later came to know that the addition was ultra vires of the parent Act and the Constitution and had deleted it in 2015 by GO 183.
Taking strong objection to this, Justice Chauhan said the state cannot be permitted to take such a stand because it had nowhere stated that it had deleted Regulation 13 because it violated the Constituti-onal scheme. Rather, the government had mentioned that Regulation 13 was inconsistent with the AP Urban Areas (Development) Act 1975.
Justice Chauhan termed the submissions as “embroidery” and an afterthought as it was not mentioned in the documents.
Stating that the courts cannot go so deep into an issue as was taken by governments, Justice Chauhan said: “You cannot curtail the powers of the court from looking into the reasons for deletion of Regulation 13.”
The AAG raised another defence. He said the state had deleted the regulation to protect the interest of property owners as the buildings could not be demolished or repaired because of their condition. Justice Chauhan said this was a contradictory submission and asked, "If the benevolent state government is so worried about the rights of owners of the property, why has it not included the buildings in the Telangana Heritage Act, 2017?”
Justice Chauhan said that if the government was so worried about the owners, it could have entered into agreements with them that it will maintain the buildings.
Saying that heritage and historical buildings should be treated better, the Chief Justice gave the example of the Bombay Municipal Corporation (BMC) which had decided to demolish an old bookstore. Citizens stridently opposed the move. The BMC took back its decision to demolish after it was flooded with requests from citizens stating that they had grown up seeing the bookshop and they had many memories of the building.
Explaining the word 'heritage', the bench said all historical sites needed to be protected and restored. The court adjourned the hearing to Tuesday.
