A Notice With No Hearing Behind It: The Kutch Demolition and the Turn to Personal Accountability

The Reply That Arrived After the Verdict Article 21

says no one shall be deprived of life or personal liberty except according to procedure established by law. Since Maneka Gandhi (1978), the Supreme Court has read that procedure to mean one that is fair, just and reasonable, not merely one that exists on paper. The Kutch demolition is a clean test of the difference between those two readings.

The procedure as written Section 61 of the Gujarat Land Revenue Code, 1879 lets a revenue officer summarily evict an unauthorised occupant of government land and deal with structures on it.

In this case, every formal step was taken:

• 18 June: the Mamlatdar of Bhuj (Rural) issued a show-cause notice.
• 19 June, 1 pm: the mosque's managing body received it.
• 19 June, same day: an order declared the mosque an encroachment.
• 20 June: the management filed its reply.
• 21 June: the structure was demolished. Notice, order and execution were all present. But the order was passed before the reply it had invited was filed. A show-cause notice exists to hear the other side, the principle known as audi alteram partem. When the decision comes before the answer, the notice has served no purpose at all.

The benchmark it was measured against On 13 November 2024, the Supreme Court laid down pan-India directions on demolitions.

A show-cause notice must allow the time fixed by local law or 15 days from service, whichever is later. The occupant must be heard and a reasoned order passed. Officials who violate these directions face contempt and may personally bear the cost of restitution and damages.

There is a caveat. The Court said its directions do not apply to unauthorised structures in public places such as roads, footpaths, land along railway lines or water bodies or where a court has ordered demolition. Whether this site falls in that category is not established in the record available.

But the Mamlatdar's own notice already answers the question. By inviting a reply, the officer committed to hearing one. Deciding before it arrived breaks that commitment, whatever minimum period applies. That is arbitrariness, which *E.P.

Royappa (1974)* held to be the opposite of equality under Article 14.

The real shift:

from the State to the officer Courts have long set aside hasty demolitions. What is different here is the remedy the High Court is pursuing. Justice Niral R. Mehta did not stop at finding the action unexplained. He has asked the Collector to come in person on 30 October and say what corrective or punitive action is proposed against the officers concerned.

That moves accountability from the State, which pays and moves on, to the individual official who signed the order. It is the same logic the Supreme Court built into its 2024 directions.

For the exam: due process is not a checklist of documents. It is the requirement that the hearing a notice promises actually takes place before anything is decided. When it does not, the law is increasingly asking not only what went wrong, but who.