HC tells Housing Minister to consider 26/11 survivor’s plea for house under EWS quota

After a government lawyer on Wednesday submitted that Rotawan’s request for accommodation under EWS quota cannot be considered, the bench said the government should have considered the same in exceptional circumstances.

A division bench of Justices Girish S Kulkarni and Firdosh P Pooniwalla was hearing Rotawan’s plea filed in 2022 through advocate Kunickaa Sadanand, seeking allotment of house against refusal of the same by the state government. The then 23-year-old petitioner had sought accommodation under EWS quota stating that she was living in slums and was at the mercy of her parents.

In October 2020, another bench of HC had directed the state government to consider Rotawan’s plea and had directed its registry to forward a copy of her plea for the consideration of the state chief secretary.

Rotawan, who was nine years old at the time of the attack, was at Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus, along with her father and brother, on November 26, 2008. She was shot in the leg during the attack. Police had taken her to St George’s Hospital, where she underwent six surgeries within two months and was bed-ridden for nearly six months.
One of the witnesses in the terror attack trial, in a local court she had identified Ajmal Kasab, the only terrorist who was captured alive.

Additional Government Pleader Jyoti Chavan on Wednesday told the bench that as per rules and instructions from Housing department officials, the request for accommodation under EWS quota cannot be considered. However, the bench observed there was ‘no application of mind’ in the decision by the department.

Dissatisfied and ‘unhappy’ with the ‘mechanical’ decision of the under secretary of the department, the bench directed that the representation file be placed before the Housing minister to apply mind to ‘peculiar facts’ of the case and to take an ‘appropriate decision’. The HC added that it was also conscious that hundreds of allotments under EWS quota routinely took place and in several matters challenging such allotments, it is observed that they do not meet the ‘test of law.’

“When a genuine case is presented before the department, the same would certainly require more human sensitivity, and basic human rights, and more particularly being a victim of a terrorist attack. In our opinion, these are real cases where there would be a need for authorities to exercise discretion appropriately which is otherwise routinely exercised and found to be in cases which we should not be in par with a case as the present case. We limit to the minister to take an appropriate decision,” the HC observed.

It added that the undersecretary was instructed to ‘foist’ the department file on the court without any affidavit to take the responsibility of the decision for two years since May, 2022 and the same was not appreciated.

“We are quite astonished at the snail’s pace at which the decision is taken that too in a matter which raises issues of basic human rights and right to shelter of a victim of terrorist attack,” the bench said and sought the Minister’s decision to be placed before it when it will hear the matter next after two weeks.