Barely 24 hours after the Supreme Court took a middle path and ordered that a status quo be maintained in the Sahara Sahar demolition case, the contesting parties on Tuesday appeared before the apex court and held each other responsible for contempt of the court's directiveSenior advocate Kailash Vasudev, appearing for Sahara India Commercial Corporation Limited, told a vacation Bench headed by Justice Altamas Kabir that how Lucknow Development Authority (LDA) had disobeyed court’s order on maintaining status quo. It alleged that LDA uprooted a temporary tin fencing at Sahara Shahar despite the status quo order passed on Monday. “The exercise took place in the presence of top state officials,” he added.However, UP Government’s additional advocate general Shail Dwivedi said the tin fencing was actually erected after the apex court passed status quo order. Therefore, the fencing had to be removed.Perusing the two contempt applications filed by both sides, the Bench agreed to hear these on Wednesday.Acting on an appeal by the Mayawati Government, the Bench had ordered for a status quo to be maintained on the demolition exercise being carried out in Sahara Shahar. The appeal was filed after the Lucknow Bench of Allahabad High Court restrained LDA from demolishing the alleged unauthorised constructions in the area under scanner. It had also asked the LDA to restore possession of land to the company.Sahara sought directions to the state Government to return the tin sheets and restore the temporary fencing which existed on June 23, when the apex court passed the status quo order, at the contemnors' cost.The Sahara application said, “Determined to terrorise the petitioner (Sahara), the contemnors (officials) again came with a large contingent of workers (approximately 250 in number) led by LDA vice-chairman Ram Bahadur himself and district magistrate Chandra Bhanu and started demolishing and dismantling the tin sheets manually.”Besides, the group also sought to restrain the contemnors — LDA chairman Vijay Shankar Pandey, vice-chairman Ram Bahadur, secretary S S Mishra, Senior Superintendent of Police Akhil Kumar and others — from taking any action against it pursuant to “false FIR lodged against it”.
