HARYANA DENIES ‘ETHNIC CLEANSING', CHIEF JUSTICE TO HEAR DEMOLITIONS CASE

The Haryana government rejected in the high court on Friday the suggestion that a demolition drive in violence-hit Nuh did not follow procedure and was an exercise in “ethnic cleansing”, as the bench hearing the case referred it to the chief justice’s court.

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On Monday, the Punjab and Haryana High Court halted the demolition of “illegally constructed” buildings in Muslim-dominated Nuh, questioning if a particular community was being targeted after communal violence broke out there.

As the case came up for hearing before the division bench of Justices Arun Palli and Jagmohan Bansal on Friday, Haryana’s Additional Advocate General Deepak Sabharwal told the court that due procedure established under the law was followed. “We have apprised the court that it is not at all a case of ethnic cleansing, and the government never works like this. For the state, all are equal. The entire procedure was followed before the demolition was carried out,” he told reporters later.