Ahmedabad: Gujarat High Court on Tuesday asked the state government to furnish the details of all unauthorized religious structures on public streets and the details of the methods undertaken for removal of them.

The court was hearing the suo motto case it registered 16 years ago in 2006, which then reached the apex court which ordered all the states to act on illegal encroachments. The supreme court later remitted the case back to the high court to monitor the development in this regard.

The state government had submitted its last report when the case was last heard before covid 19 Pandemic, but now the matter has come up for hearing before the bench of Chief Justice Aravind Kumar and Justice Ashutosh Shastri.

The bench wanted to know the present situation and the government sought a week’s time but the bench said that the HC registry granted it a time of four years, and insisted on hearing the case on Thursday.

In 2017, there were 5,264 religious structures built unauthorizedly on roads in eight municipal corporation areas. District-wise, 14,505 religious structures were found encroaching on land. Two years later, there were 14,330 illegal religious structures across the districts by July 2019. DeshGujarat