Shawdesh Desk:

The High Court on Sunday summarily rejected a writ petition filed by former Awami League lawmaker from Patuakhali 3 Golam Maula Rony on June 19 challenging the legality of a government notice served on him to demolish his ancestral house at Galachipa in Patuakhali.

The district administration, however, demolished the two-storey building where Rony and his two brothers were born, Rony’s lawyer Md Emdadul Haque Kazi told New Age.

Emdad said that the High Court on June 19 adjourned hearing of the petition until the Supreme Court resumed operation, ending its summer vacation on July 20.

On Sunday, as the petition came up in the list of hearings by the bench of Justice Zafar Ahmed and Justice Md Akhtaruzzaman, the court summarily rejected it with observation that the court had no jurisdiction to hear the case which was civil in nature.

The court observed that Rony’s writ petition seeking an order to declare position of the disputed property was not maintainable; deputy attorney general Nowroz Md Rasel Chowdhury quoted the order.

Nowroz said that only the civil court had the authority to determine the position of a disputed land.

Rony’s lawyer Emdad said that an appeal would be filed challenging the High Court order.

Emdad told the court that the government issued several notices on outspoken Rony to evict him from the house after he joined the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party in 2018.

He said that Rony and his two brothers had been residing in a house on a 13.09-decimal land after their father Shamsuddin Munshi purchased it from one Ganendra Kumar Roy Chowdhury in 1960.

Emdad said that the deed of the land went missing after the house was submerged in 1970.

He stated that the government did not claim the property before Rony constructed the two-storey building in 2001 and his father died in 2010.

Deputy attorney general Nowroz said that Rony took a lease of two-decimal land from the government in 2008 on the condition that he would regularly pay tax and would not construct any building there but he grabbed a 13.09-decimal land.

But Rony, who had been elected an Awami League lawmaker in the 2008 election, did not pay tax for the lease since 2014.

Rony had been asked to leave the house since 2018 as he violated the condition of the lease, he added.

He said that Rony could not show any document in support of the land in question.