Delhi High Court Upheld The Enemy Property Act, Constitutional Validity Of Defense Of India Rules-1962 And 1971

Jagran correspondent, New Delhi. Rejecting the petition challenging the September 2025 order regarding the Enemy Property Act, the Delhi High Court has upheld the constitutional validity of several provisions of the Defense of India Rules-1962 and Defense of India Rules-1971.

A bench of Chief Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyay and Justice Tushar Rao Gedela dismissed the petition filed against various rules of 1962 and 1971.

It is meaningless to challenge Rule 133(R)

The Chief Bench said that in the opinion of the court, the challenge to Rule 133(R) of the Defense of India Rules, 1962 appears to be completely meaningless, because in the facts of the case there is no declaration that any transfer in respect of that property was invalid under Rule 133(R).

Making the above comment, the court rejected the petition of petitioner Ashan Ur-Rab and others. In 2010, it upheld the classification of a property in Delhi as enemy property, which is held by the Custodian of Enemy Property for India.

The government wrongly relied on the notification

The petition argued that the original owner, Haji Mohammad Muslim, was an Indian citizen when he sold the property in 1968 and that the government wrongly relied on a 1965 notification that handed over the property of all Pakistani citizens to the Custodian of Enemy Property.

The court rejected the arguments and accepted the conservator's conclusion that the owners had migrated to Pakistan in 1964. As a result, the 1965 notification remains in full force.