The high court on Monday directed the panchayati raj department to list cases of land encroachment for construction of roads in Bihar while also stating what steps had been taken to address them.

The direction comes close on the heels of Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar’s petition last week, seeking a direction to authorities concerned to demolish or remove a road laid by the Ara Municipal Corporation on her raiyati (private) land in Chandwa area of Ara town.

On Monday, the bench of Justice Jayanandan Singh directed the panchayati raj department’s principal secretary to inform the court after getting details from all district magistrates (DMs) in this regard by the next date of hearing on June 20.

The principal secretaries of both panchayati raj and rural works departments, present during Monday’s court hearing, admitted the cases of encroachment for laying roads and assured the court that they would collect the reports from the DMs.

The court also passed the direction to implead the urban development department as a party to the case as the Speaker’s case falls within the jurisdiction of the municipal corporation controlled by the urban development department.

The court expanded the ambit of Meira Kumar’s petition in the backdrop of the fact that there were dozens of such cases in which substantial part of raiyati (private) land of people had allegedly been encroached upon by authorities, sometimes by use of force, for constructing public buildings.

“This court has come across dozens and dozens of cases in which substantial part of raiyati land of petitioners, the only plot of land owned by him/her in many cases, were alleged to have been used by functionaries/respondents concerned by use of brute force for laying down a road or for widening a road or for cutting earth for filling up and strengthening a road or for constructing a public building without any valid action in accordance with law,” the bench had said in its April 29 order.

While hearing the Speaker’s plea, the bench said: “This is not the first case in which a citizen of the country and a resident of this state has come rushing to this court with a grievance that the functionaries of the state government at the local level or the functionaries of a local self government, with the active aid and support of the former, in a very high-handed and arbitrary manner and throwing all requirements of law to the wind, have laid down a public road through raiyati land of the petitioner, without her prior knowledge and without any consent from her and without taking any action as per procedure established by law.”

During the hearing, Meira Kumar, in her petition along with relevant documents, tried to drive home the point as to how the civic body had illegally constructed a road on her raiyati land.

The Speaker, who annexed a copy of the registered sale deed of the land, submitted that her father late Jagjivan Ram, the former deputy Prime Minister, had purchased the land in December 1961 but the civic body constructed a road on 81 decimals of her land without either acquiring the land or taking permission or giving her any notice.