By Rana Ajit, IANS
New Delhi : The Supreme Court’s intention to evict politicians and bureaucrats who overstay in government accommodation has apparently not gone down well with the central government.
The urban development ministry is reportedly not keen to follow the court’s suggestion to make trespassing a non-bailable offence to deal with the problem, say ministry sources.
They said the ministry is filing an affidavit in the court Monday or Tuesday listing its reservations to amending section 441 of the Indian Penal Code pertaining to the offence of trespassing to make it a non-bailable and cognizable offence.
A single judge bench of B.N. Agarwal, while hearing a public interest lawsuit on the matter, has repeatedly asked the central as well as state governments to prosecute overstaying politicians and bureaucrats on charges of trespassing.
On Sep 11, Agarwal had asked the government to examine the feasibility of amending Section 441, which treats the offence of trespass as bailable.
The ministry, the central government’s virtual landlord with over 99,000 official accommodations in Delhi alone, has its own reasons for disagreeing with the court.
“After an examination of the problem of overstaying by the politicians and bureaucrats, it has been found that it is limited to the extent of a meagre 0.03 percent and as such it has not reached such an alarming proportion to warrant amendment in the penal law to tackle it,” said the sources.
The sources, privy to the drafting and legal vetting of the affidavit, said dealing with the problem of overstaying politicians is by far the easiest as the latest electoral laws stipulate that a politician cannot run contest an election without clearing government dues.
Due to this, politicians unfailingly end up paying even their penal rents for overstaying in the run-up to general election, said the sources.
The rental arrears, which amount to millions of rupees in non-election years, strangely vanish in the year of general election, the sources said.
The government faces a problem while evicting retired government officials or deducting penal rents from their pensions as the retired officials invariably end up winning the court’s sympathy and protection.
There is no dearth of court rulings, including those by the Supreme Court, where the eviction process or the recovery of penal rent regarding retired officials has been stalled by the court, the sources said.