LOK SABHA CLEARS ENEMY PROPERTY BILL
NEW DELHI: The Lok Sabha on Wednesday approved an amendment to the Enemy Property Act, 1968, that gives the government blanket powers to take over properties ever owned by a person who left for Pakistan after partition or China after the war.
The Enemy Property (Amendment and Validation) Bill, 2016, also proposes to nullify all transactions during the last five decades if it relates to an enemy property. Under this law – it is already in force by virtue of an ordinance issued in January – owners of such properties are treated as enemy subjects.
It does not matter that they are Indian citizens.
In all, there are nearly 16,000 properties across the country that have either been or are being taken over by the CEP under the 1968 Act. Of these, the process to take over 9,400 properties – estimated to be worth ` 1 lakh crore, or ` 1,000 billion – has been completed.
Among those on the receiving end of the enemy property law is the scion of erstwhile Raja of Mahmudabad Amir Mohd Khan and actor Sharmila Tagore. UP has maximum number of enemy properties. In October, 2005, the Supreme Court on a petition filed by Khan ordered that his properties declared as enemy properties should be handed back to him.
But in 2010, the UP A Government promulgated an Ordinance under which the Mehumadabad properties were again taken back from Khan.
In Sharmila Tagore’s case, the CEP in February 2015 concluded that neither Sharmila Tagore nor any of her children including actor Saif Ali Khan could inherit the Estate of the Nawab of Bhopal, Hamidullah Khan. Tagore is fighting a court case against the government that had notified every inch inherited by the Pataudi family in the Hamidullah estate, an ‘enemy’ property. The Enemy Property Act, 1968, was enacted to take over the properties owned by people who left for Pakistan or China when India was at war with the two countries. Such properties were vested in the Mumbaiheadquartered Custodian of Enemy Properties.
The Congress –which had promulgated a similar ordinance in 2010 but later backed out – did not oppose the legislation in the Lok Sabha. Like some other members, the party, however, asked the government to refer the legislation to a committee of MPs to ensure that it is legally sound.
Home minister Rajnath Singh said there was no legal impediment in enacting the law which comes into force with retrospective effect and had been vetted by the Attorney General.
“We are contemplating to pass the bill where certain people (will be) called as enemy...it will affect interest of lakhs of people,” Congress MP Shashi Tharoor said, adding the government should not take any step in haste. “It will create two types of Indians... we are bifurcating the very idea of Indian citizenship,” the former minister said.
Biju Janata Dal’s Pinaki Misra questioned the provision that invalidates legal transactions. “After all, when there is a law for 50 years, there are valid transactions, third party bona fide third party have purchased. Today, how can we nullify all those transactions and say all those are void transactions?” he asked.