Senior leader of the Bhartiya Janata Party, Dr Nirmal Singh, who has functioned as the erstwhile State’s Deputy Chief Minister and Speaker for the Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly, has received a notice for the demolition of his illegally constructed house at Nagrota—a major military installation and headquarters of the Army’s 16th Corps in Jammu.

Notice No: JDA/BOCA/A/1271-76 dated 08-11-2021 from the Jammu Development Authority (JDA) has directed Dr Nirmal Singh and his wife, Mamata Singh, an official of the University of Jammu, to remove their residential house in Nagrota within five days. It has made clear that in case of failure JDA’s Enforcement Wing would demolish the unauthorised construction and recover the cost of demolition from the owners as cost of land revenue.

The demolition notice served to Singh and his wife under section 7 (3) of Control of Building Operation Act, 1988, reads that the owners had not attained valid permission from the competent authority as prescribed under law.

"Now, therefore in exercise if power conferred under section 7 (3) of Control of Building Operation Act, 1988, read with Resolution No: JDA/CTP/BPC/26-B Dated: 06-10-2007 of the Building Operations Controlling Authority Jammu Local Area you are hereby directed to remove the illegal construction on your own level within five days from the date of issuance of the order”, reads the notice.

It is probably for the first time in the history of the erstwhile State, which was changed into a Union Territory in August 2019, that a very senior mainstream politician, having served as Deputy CM and Speaker, has been asked to demolish his residential house.

Officials in Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha’s government maintained that JDA’s notice to Dr Singh was “part of the enforcement of the rule of law”. Knowledgeable sources insist that the JDA was proceeding against the senior BJP leader, who enjoys high clout in the RSS, after clearance of the action ‘from the highest office’.

The notice of demolition has come as a big surprise to the people of Jammu and Kashmir as Dr Singh is a politician of the highest profile in the BJP. With his doctorate in history, Dr Singh has served as a faculty member in the Department of History of the University of Jammu for a long time. He also served as Professor and Head of the Department of History before his retirement.

After simultaneously contesting several Assembly and Lok Sabha elections on BJP’s ticket unsuccessfully, Dr Singh was elected as BJP’s Member of Assembly from Billawar in December 2014. He served as Deputy Chief Minister and Minister in charge Power, Housing & Urban Development in Mufti Mohammad Sayeed’s PDP-BJP government from 1 March 2015 to 7 January 2016. After Mufti’s death and a brief spell of the Governor’s rule, Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti of the same coalition retained Dr Singh as Deputy CM with his prize portfolios from 4 April 2016 to 29 April 2018.

Dr Singh was subsequently installed as Speaker of J&K’s Legislative Assembly, a position he retained till the dissolution of the Assembly and imposition of President’s rule in November 2019.

Notwithstanding sustained resistance, including a lawsuit, from the Army, Dr Singh raised his palatial house in close vicinity of an ordnance depot without a mandatory permission from the JDA. The Army’s contention was that nobody across India was by law permitted to raise a civil construction within 1000 metres from a critical defence installation. It had pointed out that Dr Singh’s construction was at a stone’s throw from an encampment.

Jammu-based public interest lawyer Sheikh Shakeel Ahmad ran an orchestrated campaign through the J&K High Court and social media, demanding demolition of the then Deputy CM’s illegal house. Over the last one year, Ahmad had repeatedly issued videos making a mockery of the LG’s administration and asking why the BJP government at the Centre was not proceeding against its own leader. “Is the rule of law only for the downtrodden and the insignificant citizens?”, Ahmad had been asking repeatedly in his interviews and videos.

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