HYDERABAD: Scores of petitions are now being filed in the high court from the Attapur area near Mehdipatnam in Hyderabad questioning the action of the state in canceling the sale deeds of the tiny house plots they bought two decades ago.
According to them, the state and the wakf board are trying to harm them by declaring these areas as wakf land in a clandestine manner without any notice.
More than 70 petitions were filed so far in the high court.
The state made unlawful amendments to the Registrations Act and brought in Rule 261 K and Rule 243 through its GO MS No 121 on June 1, 2016, and equipped itself with powers to be used against poor people behind their backs, said A Kumar Goud and B Lavanya whose petitions have come up before a bench of chief justice Hima Kohli and justice B Vijaysen Reddy on Monday.
Their counsel Amancharla V Gopal Rao argued that the Registrations Act is a Central Act and the state cannot bring in unilateral changes this way.
If a state wants to amend this central Act there are only two ways.
Either Parliament has to amend the act or the President has to accord assent to the changes, the counsel said.
He revealed interesting things about the land whose total extent is a little more than 7 acres.
The state and wakf board are claiming this land.
But more than 70 persons had bought tiny extents ranging from 75 square yards to 100 yards from one S Hanumanth Reddy.
The state and the Wakf had lost their cases in civil courts, high court, and even the Supreme Court.
And now they chose this deceitful way after they lost their case at Supreme Court in 2019, the counsel alleged.
Suddenly on March 19, 2021, the wakf and registration department officials have executed a cancellation deed in respect of all the plots declaring the registrations made in favor of the 70 plot owners as invalid.
And none of the plot owners were notified about this change.
What is more interesting is the fact that the registrations in favor of these tiny plot owners were approved by the same wakf board officials and registered by the same registration officials all these years, Gopal Rao said.
We have made the central government also a respondent because the center has to come on record and inform this court whether the action of the state in bringing in such unilateral changes to a central Act is a valid exercise of power, he said.
The bench issued notices to the state, the wakf board, the registrations department, and the central government and asked them to file their counters within four weeks.
Till then do not take any coercive action against the petitioners, the bench said.
wakf board counsel Abu Akram too assured the court that they would not take any coercive action till then.