In a residential neighbourhood of Jaipur, coaching centres have been running for years in buildings meant for homes. Students arrive in large numbers, traffic clogs the lanes, and residents complain of noise, parking chaos and the quiet conversion of planned residential zones into commercial hubs.
Recently on 4 August in Loganathan vs, State of T.N case the Supreme Court has now called the situation “not only shocking but also alarming.” From an individual demolition case that began in Chennai, the Court has expanded the proceedings into a pan-India exercise against unauthorised constructions and illegal change of land use. The question is no longer whether the problem exists. It is whether the institutional machinery that allowed it to grow will finally be made to work.
What started as a challenge to demolition proceedings against a G+1 building erected without sanction in Chennai quickly revealed a deeper pattern. The Court observed that such a construction could not have come up unnoticed. It spoke of collusion and connivance of municipal authorities and an “alarming state of affairs.”
Instead of confining itself to one petitioner, the Division Bench of Justices Ahsanuddin Amanullah and R. Mahadevan converted the matter into a continuing supervisory jurisdiction over urban governance across the country. Municipal corporations of state capitals were impleaded. Chief Secretaries of every State and Union Territory were brought on record. An Amicus Curiae was appointed as nodal officer for citizen complaints. Affidavits were demanded, personal appearances ordered, and costs enhanced for non-compliance.
The Court has repeatedly returned to the principles laid down in Rajendra Kumar Barjatya. Unauthorised constructions are not to be encouraged. Violations must be dealt “with iron hands.” Administrative failure cannot become a defence. Completion certificates and utility connections in illegal buildings must be scrutinised. Officials who look away must face departmental consequences. Appellate authorities dealing with demolition and penal orders must dispose of pending matters within defined timelines. These are not new rules. They are the existing law, restated because the existing law has been treated as optional.
Jaipur figures prominently in the latest order. Land earmarked under the Master Plan is alleged to have been put to uses contrary to the sanctioned land use. Land surrendered for planned development has neither been properly utilised nor protected from encroachment. Coaching institutes continue to operate from premises that cause hardship to residents even though the government has constructed dedicated multi-storeyed complexes for their relocation. Those complexes, the Court was told, are reportedly being allotted to other institutions, defeating the very purpose for which they were built. The Jaipur Development Authority has been directed to place on record the corrective measures it has taken, its Commissioner must file a personal affidavit, and pending appellate matters must be decided within two weeks. Any further allotment of the dedicated buildings will remain subject to the final outcome of these proceedings.
The Court has also taken note of the Lucknow tragedy in which fifteen students lost their lives in a building used for commercial purposes. A demolition order had been passed in 2016, recalled on a technical ground, and then left undisturbed until the fatal incident. The Vice-Chairman of the Lucknow Development Authority has been called to explain the non-compliance and contempt proceedings have been initiated.
The pattern is familiar: delayed enforcement, technical escapes, and eventual human cost.
The public conversation around such orders often splits into familiar camps. One side sees judicial overreach into municipal administration. The other celebrates every direction as a long-overdue assertion of the rule of law. Neither reaction addresses the only question that matters in a constitutional court: whether the directions are rooted in existing statutory obligations and whether the Court has remained within the limits of its supervisory role. Building bye-laws, Master Plans and land-use regulations are not judicial inventions. They are the product of democratic processes. When municipal and development authorities systematically fail to enforce them, and when residential areas are converted into commercial hubs with official indifference or worse, the Court is not inventing policy. It is insisting that the policy already enacted be obeyed.
There is, of course, a risk. Continuing mandamus in urban governance can lead to excessive judicial interference. Personal appearances of senior officers, higher costs, and strict deadlines can push authorities to act, but if used too often, every municipal failure could become a contempt case. So far, the Court appears to have maintained a balance. It removed earlier adverse remarks against a Tamil Nadu officer after finding that she had acted in good faith. It also asked additional appellate officers to clear a backlog of nearly 700 cases instead of simply ordering widespread demolitions. These actions suggest a measured approach rather than unnecessary judicial overreach.
The deeper problem remains administrative and political. Illegal coaching centres in residential colonies are not secret. Residents complain. Ward officers know. Local politicians often benefit from the silence. The same pattern repeats for commercial conversion of residential plots, unauthorised floors, and the quiet regularisation of the irregular. Courts can set deadlines and demand affidavits. They cannot permanently staff every municipal inspection team or rewrite the incentive structures that make enforcement politically costly. That task belongs to the executive and to the voters who elect it.
Until that larger accountability arrives, the Supreme Court’s insistence on the elementary proposition that the Master Plan means what it says is both necessary and incomplete. Two storeys of unauthorised construction in Chennai led to a nationwide inquiry. Two decades of coaching centres operating in residential Jaipur have now been flagged as shocking and alarming. The stories are different. The institutional failure is the same. The Court has done what courts can do: it has refused to treat the failure as inevitable. Whether the authorities treat the directions as temporary inconvenience or as a lasting change in culture will decide if the next tragedy is prevented or merely litigated after the fact.
