National Institute of Medical Science University Rajasthan & Anr. v. State of Rajasthan & Ors.
Background
Decades of public interest litigation and suo motu proceedings in the Rajasthan High Court had tried, without much success, to stop encroachments in the catchment area of Ramgarh Dam near Jaipur, once a major source of drinking water for the city and a venue for the 1982 Asian Games, now left completely dry. The National Institute of Medical Sciences University (NIMS) had built a large university campus on a specific plot (Khasra No. 526) in this catchment area, despite the land never having been formally allotted to it, and had encroached on roughly 8,125 square metres beyond what the authorities had even considered. NIMS's writ petitions and appeals against the Jaipur Development Authority's demolition order were dismissed at every level of the Rajasthan courts, leading to this final appeal before the Supreme Court.
Decision Breakdown
The Supreme Court held that NIMS had no legal right to the land: it had never properly applied to the Collector (the only competent authority) for allotment, its later approach to the Chief Minister was legally irrelevant, and in any event the land was pasture land on which no occupancy ("Khatedari") rights could ever accrue by law. The Court found NIMS's conduct "brazen," noting it had built extensively while merely assuming its unanswered applications amounted to tacit approval, and held that unauthorized construction on government/public land must be demolished as a matter of rule of law, relying on its own precedents in M.I. Builders and Jagpal Singh. The petitions were dismissed with an unusually heavy cost of Rs. 10 lakh per petition for the encroachment, and the Court directed the Jaipur Development Authority, assisted by the State Government and police, to demolish the unauthorized construction by 30 November 2017.
Lesson Learnt
Silence from a government authority on an application is never a licence to presume approval and build on public land: unauthorized construction on encroached government or catchment land will be ordered demolished regardless of how large or long-standing the structure has become.