Srinagar- Observing that the right to property is a constitutional right guaranteed under the Constitution of India, the High Court J&K and Ladakh on Friday cannot be taken away without adopting due process of law.
Hearing a plea, a bench of Justice Sanjay Dhar also directed that then Deputy Commissioner Ganderbal “deserves to be proceeded against for having filed a false pleading” before the District Judge, Ganderbal.
The case pertained to taking over possession of a building by District Development Commissioner and Additional Deputy Commissioner “without even informing the petitioner (owner) not to speak of obtaining his consent.”
“The petitioner was not aware as to who is in possession of the building in question and it is only during the course of 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,” the Bench said, adding, “To top it all, the then Deputy Commissioner, 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. This stand of the Deputy Commissioner is contrary to the stand of the respondents taken in this writ petition.”
This conduct of a “responsible officer of the Government” the Bench said, is “reprehensible and shows that the said officer has no respect for 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, adding, “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 then Deputy Commissioner, therefore, deserves to be proceeded against for having filed a false pleading before the learned District Judge, Ganderbal, the court added.
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