Uttarakhand govt, SADA ignoring HC order on illegal constructions
While the government has laid all the focus on clearing Dehradun city of encroachments, another decision of the Uttarakhand high court in which it indicted the stategovernment and Special Area Development Authority (SADA), which administers areas on the outskirts of Dehradun, of allowing illegal construction of housing complexes and resultant felling of trees, has largely remained away from limelight. The June 16 order had asked the government to constitute a SIT, headed by an IGP-rank officer to register FIRs against senior officials of SADA and to also start disciplinary action against them for allowing housing complexes to come up on agricultural land. However, the petitioner in the case Anuj Kansal said that it’s been two months since the high court’s order but the SIT is yet to be formed. Kansal said, “The court had ordered the government to form an SIT and to register FIRs against the senior officials of the SADA in whose tenure the construction was done but the authority did nothing.” SADA officials, meanwhile, have defended their action saying that their role is “limited to issuing notices and demolishing buildings that are on government land and that most of the construction of housing complexes has been on private or forest land which does not fall under our purview.”
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