The Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation authorities have gone ahead with evicting the illegal settlers and bulldozing the illegal structures at the Shantipalli slum cluster after the Orissa High Court dismissed the squatters’ writ petition.
“It is true that the petitioners and their forefathers have been residing in Shantipalli Basti for several decades; however, their occupation of Government land is unauthorised”, the Court ruled in an order pronounced recently.
While ancestral occupation may evoke sympathy, it does not confer a legally enforceable right to perpetuate residence upon public land in defiance of a statutory redevelopment plan, the Single Bench of Justice Dr Sanjeeb Panigrahi ruled.
Long and continuous possession of public land, without vesting of title or formal recognition under the statutory framework, does not confer ownership or indefeasible right to remain in possession. The right to shelter under Article 21 is a right to reasonable housing and rehabilitation, not a right to trespass or continue illegal occupation, the Court further ruled.
The Supreme Court has consistently held that encroachment on public land cannot be regularised merely on the grounds of long possession, and the State is under a constitutional obligation to reclaim and utilise public land for planned development. Justice Panigrahi stated in the order.
The State has embarked upon a structured, budgeted, and meticulously conceived programme of in-situ redevelopment, aimed at transmuting vulnerable informal habitats into dignified, permanent urban housing.
Where a public authority advances a lawful and transparent scheme for large-scale rehabilitation, courts have unfailingly declined invitations to convert the right to shelter into an unyielding shield against development.
Further, the Odisha Land Rights to Slum Dwellers Act, 2017, constitutes a transformative legislative endeavour that is an instrument designed to usher slum dwellers from the shadows of informality into the constitutional sunlight of secured tenure, infrastructural adequacy, and regulated urban planning.
It envisages the systematic identification of eligible slum dwellers, the conferment of land rights or, where circumstances so warrant, the provision of alternative rehabilitation, the calibrated and phased redevelopment of the notified settlements; and the planning, coordination, and stewardship of such redevelopment through the Urban Local Bodies.
Notably, the statute does not sanction unrestrained perpetuation of encroachments, rather, it provides a structured legislative pathway through which slum dwellers are progressively integrated into a planned, regulated, and sustainable urban framework.
It is, in fact, a visionary exercise in urban transformation, intended to replace precarious shanties with durable and dignified dwelling units. The project is animated not merely by bureaucratic necessity but by a larger constitutional aspiration in order to confer stability, dignity, and security upon those who have historically inhabited the margins of the urban fabric.
Such a purpose is not only legitimate but luminous; it constitutes a public purpose of the highest order, aligning executive action with constitutional compassion, Justice Panigrahi ruled in the order.