NOIDA/GHAZIABAD: The Allahabad high court has ordered shifting of all religious structures that were constructed on public land after January 1, 2011, and encroach on roads, pathways, lanes and side roads. The high court also directed the chief secretary to file a compliance report after three months.On encroachments that took place before January 2011, the court has directed that they be shifted from their present place within six months.A division bench of Justices Sudhir Agarwal and Ajit Kumar on Friday also made the DM, district police chiefs and circle officers of police accountable for the encroachments made on road after June 10, 2016.The district administrations of Noida and Ghaziabad said on Saturday they would comply with the order once they got a copy of it. According to officials, a list of such religious places has already been submitted to the high court in 2011 and a committee comprising the district magistrate and the SSP will start implementing the order after a review of the law and order situation.According to the ADM of Gautam Budh Nagar, Kumar Vineet, no encroachments took place in the district after 2011. In Noida alone, four-five religious places are encroaching public land, including one in the green belt, abutting the main service road of Noida-Greater Noida Expressway in Sector 127.The Shani Mandir in Sector 127 came up in the green belt after an existing temple built in 1972 was extended by Swami Jaswant Nathji who was gifted a piece of 10 square feet by a Bakhtawarpur resident.Mahant Shiv Nath Baba, who currently administers the temple, told TOI that his predecessor Swami Jaswant Nathji fought a court case in 2005 to get a stay order for vacation of the green belt area for creation of the service road. A curved road has been built abutting the temple.“In 2016, the villagers attacked me with an intention to take ownership of the land so that they could take compensation claim on the green belt. I had to leave the temple for some time due to injuries. We wrote to chief minister Yogi Aditya Nath who directed the authorities to reinstate us at the temple,” he said.The Atta Peer — a religious memorial built in June 1986 by Hukum Singh in memory of his son Rambal Singh — has not been shifted despite takeover of private land by Noida Authority. While the memorial stands on the green belt located on the main road between Sector 17 and 18 abutting the busy Captain Vijayant Thapar Marg, devotees line up outside the same especially on Thursdays.Similarly, the Hanuman temple is located on the main road in Hajipur of Sector 104 and a major part of it is on the main road connecting the sector with the expressway. Pandit Ramesh Pathak, who looks after its affairs, said it is almost 25-years-old.In neighbouring Ghaziabad, the district administration had conducted an anti-encroachment drive on the green belt along Sucheta Kriplani Marg in Shakti Khand 4 in January last month following a TOI report, but demolished only the illegal banquet halls on the stretch leaving behind religious sites comprising a temple, a gurdwara and a church.In an RTI reply, the GDA had made it clear that it has not allotted land to any religious sites on the green belt. The encroachments on Shakti Khand’s green belt had come up only in the past five years.Such structures are also encroaching green belts in Seva Nagar, Meerut Road, Kavi Nagar and Bulandshahr industrial area.

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