The Supreme Court of Nepal has issued an interim order directing the government not to remove squatters without proper management.
A joint bench of Supreme Court Justices Kumar Regmi and Nityananda Pandey issued the interim order to this effect on Friday. A writ petition had been filed in the Supreme Court on April 25 after the government started evicting squatters.
Gopal Ranpaheli, Gen Z leaders Arnab Chaudhary, Ojaswi Bhattarai, Tanuja Pandey, Majid Ansari, Prajwal Bikram Rana, Kabita Rai, and Bikash Kumar Gupta, who were living in the squatters' settlement, had filed a writ petition in the Supreme Court.
They had demanded that the government stop the eviction of landless squatters from their settlement in Kathmandu's Thapathali, Manohara, Sinnamangal, or any other place on the banks of rivers across the country.
The government had started using bulldozers in the riverside squatter settlements including Thapathali in Kathmandu since April 24.
The Office of the Prime Minister and the Council of Ministers, Prime Minister Balendra Shah, the Ministry of Home Affairs, Kathmandu Metropolitan City, Nepal Police, the National Human Rights Commission, the Ministry of Land Management, Cooperatives and Poverty Alleviation, the Kathmandu Municipal Police Force and the National Land Commission have been mentioned as opponents in the writ petition.
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