'Court judgment should be obeyed on enemy property', says Erstwhile Mahmudabad King

New Delhi, Aug 30 (ANI): Mohammed Amir Mohammed Khan, the King of erstwhile principality of Mahmudabad in Uttar Pradesh on Monday said that the judgment of any court should be obeyed on the enemy property issue.

Khan's statement came a day after Minister of State for Minority Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid said that the amendment in the Enemy Property Bill would allow an Indian citizen to continue to hold his property, if they have received the property back by a court order.

"Any law that is enacted by Parliament, whether it is with respective to this or any other matter which impinges on the rights of the citizens of India, that law should not be put beyond the purview of the courts of this land, the lowest and the highest, and if some decisions have been made at the lowest and the highest (court) and have become final, they should be obeyed," said Khan, while addressing the media persons here today.

"There was an ongoing matter of tenants in the Supreme Court, which was listed in July. It was listed on July 12, 14, 15; they are asking me to say so I am saying, otherwise I would not have. So, it was listed, and after the ordinance came, it was closed. All the things that went wrong in the custodian of enemy property or are going to be ruined, they would be shut down by now or shut down closed. Why? Because8 nobody can question about those things in any court," he added.

Earlier today, there was uproar in the Lok Sabha over a Bill to amend a law governing properties left behind by those who went to Pakistan during partition.

Members of the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) protested and forced adjournment of the House for an hour.

Raising the matter during Zero Hour, SP chief Mulayam Singh said the bill would snatch the rights of the Muslims who stayed back in India and went against a Supreme Court verdict, which had granted them the right over properties, which were left behind by their forefathers.

However, Parliamentary Affairs Minister P K Bansal said the government was bringing appropriate amendments to take care of the concerns raised by Mulayam Singh.

The UPA government introduced a fresh amendment in the controversial Enemy Property Bill, 2010 on Friday, under which India-born legal heirs to "enemy" property will have to overcome any legal challenge by tenants occupying that property.

This change was introduced to appease the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which had strongly opposed the amendments the Union Cabinet had cleared earlier and which had restored the right of legal heirs to such property, a right that the ordinance promulgated in early July had taken away.

The BJP had been maintaining that it wanted the Bill to be a replica of the ordinance.

The Bill makes it clear that courts would have no jurisdiction over occupation of properties, which have been left behind by those who went to Pakistan at the time of Partition. (ANI)