THE Enemy Property (Amendment and Validation) Second Bill, 2010, introduced in Parliament on August 2, 2010, is in controversy. According to legal experts, the Bill ignores the larger interest of the country and has been redrafted by the UPA Government under pressure from Muslims.
This issue basically came into limelight when a bench of Supreme Court of India headed by Justice Ashok Bhan ruled in favour of the son of Raja Mehmudabad, who had left India in 1958. This judgement created a chaos and thousands of such ‘claimants’ are encouraged to use the verdict to gain control over ‘enemy properties’. As a remedial measure, to thwart various other similar claims the Government of India promulgated an Ordinance which lapsed on September 6, 2010. Subsequently, the Home Ministry drafted this Second Bill, which was the replica of the Ordinance. But things changed. The vested interests denounced it as anti-Muslim. The Muslim MPs while forgetting that they are elected not by a separate electorate but by the joint electorate of a secular India, started acting as Muslim pressure group. Their campaign against the Bill gave an impression that something wrong is being done to the Muslims of India. This is here, under the pressure of the vested interests that the Government of India redrafted the Bill. Conspicuously, the argument used in the new Bill all together negated the statement, facts, logic, arguments and historical justification used in the earlier Bill. The Bill is yet to come for discussion in the Parliament.
The Enemy Property Act enacted by Government of India in 1968 empowers it to acquire the property of those people who were directly or indirectly associated with China and Pakistan as both these countries waged unprovoked wars against India in 1962 and 1965 respectively. Such legislations are in vogue in other parts of the world and are invariably enacted when one country is in the state of war with the other. After the war, the Government can dispose off the enemy property.
A number of such properties in India under custodians mounted up due to Partition, and three successive wars (with Pakistan in 1965 and 1971 and one with China in 1962). These properties have been mismanaged, controlled by vested interests, tenants and mafia groups. The Government of India could not follow an unambiguous and scientific approach to deal with such properties. Breeding conflicts, claims and counter claims over ownership of these properties turn out to be the norms of the day.
India Policy Foundation (IPF) has come out with an Intervention Paper, The Issue of Enemy Property and India’s National Interest, perfectly exposing the lobbying by Muslim MPs and how the Government of India was forced by them to redraft the Bill. The Paper, published both in English and Hindi, also provides details how the properties of the Hindus who left Pakistan after the Partition, were disposed off by the Government of Pakistan. The Pak-government had proclaimed Ordinance in 1947, which banned the transfer of any property by an evacuee and various conditions were imposed preventing an evacuee through his agent, assignee or attorney, from selling or exchanging his property.
“It is evident that the Bill II was the result of one-sided lobbying, communalism and weak coalition Government. Such politics would give birth to a child whose jurisdiction will not be confined to the enemy property but rewriting the history of Partition and migration,” says the Intervention Paper adding that the Enemy Property Act should not be allowed to become part of a communal agenda since it is purely a policy matter and should be treated with secular perspective with sense of history.
(The Issue of Enemy Property and India’s National Interest: A critical study of Indian government’s approach to enemy properties, Onkareshwar Pandey and Manmohan Sharma, Pp 62 (PB), Rs 50.00, India Policy Foundation, D-51, Hauz Khas, New Delhi- 110 016)
