A panel of Justices D Y Chandrachud and Surya Kant ruled that the state government must repay the total sum seized from the accused demonstrators as a result of the 2019 proceedings.
The Supreme Court instructed the Uttar Pradesh government on Friday to refund crores of rupees collected from anti-CAA demonstrators in light of 2019 proceedings. The Yogi Adityanath-led administration informed the Supreme Court that on February 13 and 14, it dropped 274 recovery letters issued against anti-CAA activists for property destruction.
A panel of Justices D Y Chandrachud and Surya Kant ruled that the state government must repay the total sum seized from the accused demonstrators as a result of the 2019 proceedings.
The bench declined to accept Additional Advocate General Garima Prashad's suggestion that the demonstrators and the state government be permitted to file a claim with the claim tribunal instead of mandating refunds. The Supreme Court has granted the UP administration permission to proceed against alleged anti-CAA protestors under a new law, the Uttar Pradesh Recovery of Damages to Public and Private Property Act, which was notified on August 31, 2020, and has ordered the government to refund the money recovered from the alleged protestors.
On February 11, the Supreme Court chastised the UP government for acting on the recovery notices given to the accused anti-CAA demonstrators in December 2019, giving it one more chance to drop the proceedings and warning that it will invalidate the proceedings for being illegal. It had said that the procedures launched in December 2019 were against the law as established by the Supreme Court and could not be supported.
The Supreme Court was hearing a petition filed by one Parwaiz Arif Titu seeking the quashing of notices sent by the district administration to alleged protestors for recovering losses caused by damage to public properties during the anti-CAA agitations in Uttar Pradesh.
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