Exactly five years after winning a 32-year-long court battle following which huge properties were restored to him by a Supreme Court, an erstwhile prince-turned-professor of astro-physics at both Oxford and Cambridge has been brought back to square one, thanks to an amendment in the Enemy Property Act.
This follows issue of an Ordinance by President Pratibha Patil last week whereby even courts were not entitled to alter the status of any property that was once declared 'enemy property'. Significantly, the amended law has been brought into effect with retrospect.
Even as Union Home Minister P Chidambaram is yet to table the Enemy Property (Amendment and Validation) Bill 2010 before the current session of Parliament, officials of the Uttar Pradesh government have shown unusual speed in taking over possession of various buildings, whose possession was handed over to the Raja in pursuance of the apex court order four years ago.
While the apex court order had entitled Raja Amir Mohammad Khan of Mahmoodabad in Sitapur district, about 8-km from Lucknow, to all his properties that were seized by the government after his late father chose to migrate to Pakistan , the new Ordinance seeks to send the message loud and clear that "once an enemy property, always an enemy property".
The court's order came on the plea that since Amir Mohammad Khan had chosen not to migrate with his father to Pakistan and has stayed on in India as a rightful Indian citizen, he was entitled to reclaim his rights over different properties taken over by the custodian. An Oxbridge alumnae, 63-year-old Khan not only taught at Oxford and Cambridge but later also became a Congress MLA from Mahmoodabad.
Says the Ordinance, "The enemy property vested in the custodian shall, notwithstanding that the enemy, or the enemy subject, or the enemy firm has ceased to be an enemy, due to death, extinction, winding up of business, or change of nationality, or that the legal heir and successor is a citizen of India, or the citizen of a country, which is
not an enemy, continue to remain vested in the Custodian, till it is divested by the Central Government."
It is learnt that the Supreme Court order of 2005 had created major problems for the government as owners of similar properties across the country sought restoration of their confiscated properties on the same plea. Several such 'enemy' properties were stated to be existing in New Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai, where the most prominent of these was Mohammad Ali Jinnah's house on Malabar Hill.
The Mumbai-based official custodian of enemy properties as well as the External Affairs Minister, too, were under tremendous pressure on the same account.
Eventually, the Home Ministry convened a meeting of External Affairs ,
Finance Ministry and the Custodian on June 18 last following which the resolved to make a suitable amendment in the law itself to shut the Pandora's box that was opened in the wake of the apex court verdict in case of the Raja of Mahmoodabad.
With the Ordinance in place, prime properties worth hundreds of crores in Lucknow's main shopping centre, Hazratganj , Nainital , Sitapur and Lakhimpur-Kheri , some of which were restored to the Raja, would go back to the custodian or its lessees. Since the bungalows of the district magistrate, superintendent of police and chief medical
officer in Sitapur had also been handed over to the Raja, the official machinery was all set to get the possession of these buildings.
"We will take over these buildings now as the order of the apex court was invalidated by the Ordinance", district magistrate Sanjay Kumar told this scribe on Wednesday.
Private tenants to whom such properties were let out by the custodian, are feeling elated over the Ordinance.
"It is our victory because we always maintained that the property of those who migrated to Pakistan should not go back to their heirs; after all we have also been deprived of what our ancestors held before the partition in Pakistan", argues Sandeep Kohli, who owns a huge swanky showroom in once such building owned by the Mahmoodabad royalty in Hazratganj.
Raja was not available for comment.
