New Delhi: The Union government has now opposed in the Delhi High Court, a plea that sought electricity connections for about 800 Hindu migrants from Pakistan living at the Delhi Jal Board Maidan in North Delhi's Adarsh Nagar area here, submitting that the migrants there were illegally encroaching upon land belonging to the Ministry of Defence.
The high court had last month issued a notice to the Delhi government, Centre and Tata Power on the petition seeking relief for the families that live there.
According to the Centre's reply to the petition, the contents of which were first reported by The Indian Express, the Union government has said that the 70.253-acre land where the migrants have been living, had been transferred to the Defence Research and Development Organisation in August 2018.
Following this, the Centre said that it has regularly been following up with the relevant local authorities on whether the "unauthorised occupation/encroachment" of the area had been removed. The Centre went on to say that the Ministry of Defence was aware that electricity connection to the families there had been disconnected and had taken up this matter with the North Delhi Power Limited. They added that they had also taken up the matter of disconnected water supply to the area with officials in the Delhi Jal Board.
The Centre told the court that not only is it not responsible for providing electricity connections or providing any assistance to any sort of migrants but that in view of the "illegal encroachment", the petition was "misconceived and frivolous".
The petitioner, one Hariom, had also made Tata Power a respondent to the plea but stated that most migrants either have an Aadhaar card or long-term Visas, neither of which were being accepted by the power company as proof of occupancy — as a result of which they had disconnected power supply to the region. According to reports, the plea sought direction for providing electricity connection to the migrants on the basis of their Aadhaar card, long term visa and passport under the DERC (Supply Code and Performance Standards) Regulations, 2017 and to also include these documents as identity proof and Aadhaar card as proof of occupancy. The case is listed for hearing today.