Srinagar, Feb 21: The High Court J&K and Ladakh on Friday held that the right to property is a constitutional right guaranteed under the Constitution of India and the same cannot be taken away without adopting due process of law.
A bench of Justice Sanjay Dhar said this while dealing with a related plea, even as the court held that then Deputy Commissioner Ganderbal “deserves to be proceeded against for having filed a false pleading before the District Judge, Ganderbal.
The case is related to taking over possession of a building by the District Development Commissioner and Additional Deputy Commissioner “without even informing the owner not to speak of obtaining his consent.”
The bench said: “The petitioner was not aware as to who is in possession of the building in question and it is only during the course of a civil suit filed by him before the learned Principal District Judge, Ganderbal, that he came to know from the report of the Commissioner that the building is occupied by the District Administration”.
“To top it all, the then Deputy Commissioner (DC), Ganderbal, filed a palpably false pleading before the learned Principal District Judge, Ganderbal, stating therein that the building in question is not in occupation of the District Administration”, it added.
This stand of the DC, the bench said, is contrary to the stand of the respondents taken in this writ petition.
The court observed the conduct as “reprehensible” of a “responsible officer of the government” which, it said, shows that the officer has no respect for the rule of law.
“The officer concerned did not think twice before filing a false written statement before the learned trial court with a view to defeat the claim of the petitioner,” the court said. “The courts generally trust the statements of public officers given by them in their pleadings at their face value as there is a presumption of correctness attached to the pleadings filed by the public officers in the course of their official duties but the present case is a classic example of a public officer filing misleading pleadings before the Court just to defeat the rightful claim of a litigant.”
The court said then “Deputy Commissioner, therefore, deserves to be proceeded against for having filed a false pleading before the learned District Judge, Ganderbal”.
