New Delhi/December,10 :The Supreme Court on Thursday asked the Jammu and Kashmir High Court to decide on December 21 the petitions seeking review of its verdict scrapping the Roshni Act which conferred proprietary rights to occupants of state land.
The apex court said that it would hear in January last week the appeals filed before it challenging the October 9 verdict of the high court. A bench headed by Justice NV Ramana considered the oral assurance of Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, who appeared for the Jammu and Kashmir administration, that no coercive action would be taken against those petitioners who had approached the top court in the matter as they are not “land grabbers or unauthorised people”.
Mehta told the apex court that the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir had already filed a review petition in the high court and said that the authority is “not against bona fide and common people who are not land-grabbers”.
The bench, also comprising Justices Surya Kant and Aniruddha Bose, said that pendency of appeals before the apex court would not come in the way of the high court in deciding the review petitions pending there.
The Jammu and Kashmir High Court had on October 9 declared the Roshni Act “illegal, unconstitutional and unsustainable”, and ordered a CBI probe into the allotment of land under this law.
The Roshni Act was enacted in 2001 with the twin objective of generating resources for financing power projects and conferment of proprietary rights to the occupants of state land.
