1. The petitioners in each of these three cases have come to this Court making the grievance that the revenue and/or the administrative authorities forcibly demolished their house, either completely or partially, on the alleged grounds that the petitioners buildings/structures encroached upon some public land. It is averred by the petitioners in all the three cases that demolitions were forcibly carried out without giving any notice or prior information, without holding any proceeding under any law and even without taking any measurements in presence of the petitioners to show any encroachment over any public land.

2. It may be noted here that these three cases are not in isolation but of late similar cases are coming to this Court in a constant stream. A large number of cases are filed under the heading demolition or removal of encroachment making similar grievances that the houses, buildings, structures or shops constructed by and belonging to the respective petitioners were either forcibly demolished (wholly or in part) or were being threatened with demolition on the alleged grounds that the structure in question was unauthorisedly constructed or it encroached upon some public land, road or the flanks of a road. A common feature in all these cases is that the respondent authorities proceeded to demolish the structure(s) or gave the threat of demolition (as the case may be) without initiating any legal proceeding or giving any notice to the house owner. The m most that was done in some of the cases was that some markings were put by the authorities on the portions of the house in question. The markings indicated the extent of the alleged encroachment and hence, the extent to which the house was to be demolished. According to the respondent authorities the markings were put on the basis of measurements taken of the piece of land over which the structure was constructed along with adjoining lands. Hardly in any case, however, the authorities were able (or cared) to show that even the measurements were taken in presence of the house owner or his representative or at least after giving him prior intimation regarding the date and time when the measurements would be taken.

3. On the other hand in practically all the cases the house owners asserted that either no measurements were taken or in any event measurements were taken behind their back and without any intimation to them. Even in the face of strong denial by the house owner no measurement report was produced before this Court in most of the cases.

4. Cases with very little variation in the fact position as stated above keep coming to this Court not only from the urban centres which in any event are very few in this State, but mostly from the district and subdivisional level towns and even from block level Bazars in the remote rural areas. In some cases the respective petitioners made serious allegations of malfeasance against the respective respondent authorities. It was stated that the demolition was carried out or was being threatened for settling previous grudges of a personal nature or simply because the petitioners in those cases were unable to satisfy the respondents demand for money.

5. The manner in which the executive seems to have gone on demolition campaign was quite disquieting to this Court. What was of far graver concern was that the invariable plea taken by the respondent authorities in almost all the cases was that they were acting under the orders of this Court and were simply complying with the direction given by a bench this Court in a certain writ petition being C.W.J. No.2290/90 (Arun Kumar Mukherjee V/s. State of Bihar). In other words, the executive actions which manifestly appeared to be highly unreasonable, arbitrary and illegal were being sought to be perpetrated under the name of this Court.

6. Faced with this situation this Court resolved to examine the matter in depth and took up these three writ petitions as the test case. The Advocate G