Disturbed Areas Act and the Weaponisation of Property in Gujarat

Origins of the Disturbed Areas Act 

“The protectionist law was made to prevent ghettoisation, but it is now promoting it”, comments a police officer working in Vadodara, one of the major cities that comes under the purview of the Gujarat Prohibition of Transfer of Immovable Property and Provision for Protection of Tenants from Eviction from Premises in Disturbed Areas Act, 1991, colloquially known as the Disturbed Areas Act (“DAA”). The Act was originally tabled in the year 1986 and became a law in 1991 under Chimanbhai Patel, following a phase of intensified violence in the city of Ahmedabad. Rising ethno-religious tensions gave rise to the DAA, ostensibly to restrict spatial segregation by religion by preventing the sale of property in a state of distress in 'disturbed areas' that had witnessed sectarian violence. Initially introduced as a temporary measure for 1.5 years, the Act stuck around and has been amended and modified multiple times.

Implementation Gaps and Ghettoisation

To get a grasp of the Act, we must go over certain important sections. Section 3 bestows upon the State Government the power to notify an area as ‘disturbed’ based on the intensity and duration of riots or mob violence that may have hampered public order and sanctity. Section 4 effectively invalidates all transactions of immovable property in the disturbed area within a period specified by the State Government under the preceding Section 3. Additionally, Section 5 contributes to these restrictions by mandating prior approval of the Collector for the transfer of immovable property in such notified areas.

There is a growing gap between intention and implementation, as the rules lack depth and nuance, which leaves scope for misinterpretation and consequently, grave misuse. No guidelines are provided for the consideration of an area as ‘disturbed’, barring the occurrence of riots or mob violence. The definitions of terms like ‘intensity’ and ‘duration’, which are crucial parameters here for determining areas that are actually disturbed and necessitate state intervention and a complete ban on transfers, are also vague. The exclusion of definitions of vital terms like these is arguably an intentional move to facilitate the unquestioned propagation of authority. In fact, Ahmedabad saw an unprecedented and a largely unexplained rate of increase in the number of DAA notified areas between 2013 and December 2019, growing 51% from 25 square km to 39 square km. Since its inception, the Gujarat government has not denotified any areas under the DAA. Administration continues to list predominantly Muslim areas, such as Shahpur as disturbed, blatantly ignoring the fact that the locality has not been home to any communal incidents since 2002. Areas are meant to be notified as such for a period of 5-10 years only, beyond which they are ideally reconsidered as disturbed only if violence persists, but in reality many areas are perpetually stuck in a cycle of re-notification.

Source: Bhaskar English News Article

Besides the social isolation and religious segregation, the procedure of getting approval from the Collector is in itself excruciating. A.K. Sambad, Deputy Collector of Vadodara provides figures, and states that as many as 259 interreligious land transfer applications had been received during the first half of 2024. However, as of June 2024, none had received approval because they were all stuck at the stage of police verification. A bird's-eye view makes it clear that Muslims are pushed into overcrowded, under-serviced neighbourhoods where State neglect continues to reinforce the ghettoisation. On the other hand, many Hindu property dealers report not being able to sell their property either. The Act detrimentally affects both Hindus and Muslims and arguably functions as a revenue-generating tool for politicians, akin to the liquor ban.

Source: Maktoob Media News Article on an incident from early 2025

Petitioners, High Court and the Struggle for Inclusive Housing Rights

The 2020 amendment to the Act introduced more terms like ‘proper clustering’, which were also left largely undefined, and thus, exploitable. According to changes implemented by the State Government in 2020, the collector must be satisfied that the ‘demographic equilibrium’ is not being disturbed due to transfer of the property and a no-objection certificate (NOC) from the authorities was made mandatory for property sales within 500 meters of the disturbed areas. The authorities could now reinstate the notification at their discretion and satisfaction, hence making it a stringent imposition, and penalties for going against the law were increased from six months to between three and five years.

At present, two major petitions, one from January 2021 and another filed in August 2022 remain pending before Benches led by the Chief Justice of the High Court of Gujarat. Both pertain to the harshness and arbitrariness of the 2020 amendment. In the former case, the petitioner Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind Gujarat approached the High Court of Gujarat, challenging the amendments made to Section 3 and Section 5, and seeking an interim stay on the enforcement of the Act in 2024, but the request was declined. Subsequently, a Special Leave Petition contesting this order was also not accepted by the Supreme Court, which instructed the petitioner to seek an expedited hearing from the High Court of Gujarat instead.

These new amendments were put undern interim stay by the Gujarat High Court on 20th January, 2021 in response to a petition filed by Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind Gujarat, rendering the aforementioned amendments ineffective. The petition contended that the amended Act infringed fundamental rights under Article 14 inasmuch as the intrinsic objective of the Act is discriminatory, Articles 15, 19 and 21  by being imprecise, arbitrary, discriminatory and permitting segregation on grounds of religion and identity. The amended Act was also asserted to contravene property rights under Articles 26 and 300A and international obligations of India under covenants like the International Covenant on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. Another noteworthy contention the petition rightly put forth was that the revised Act places unreasonable restrictions on the freedom to move freely and reside anywhere within the country under Article 19(1)(d) and 19(1)(e). Through a series of judgments in 2023, the High Court of Gujarat did a commendable job at limiting the executive overreach entailed in the Act by reiterating that collectors can only verify free consent and must not block property sales on account of police reports, personal concern for law and order, or objections from neighbours, since third parties have no locus standi.

Despite these legal initiatives stressing the need for inclusivity, there remains much to be desired. Recently, the Act has been in the news for being responsible for the ripple effect that resulted in the suicide of Saniya Ansari, a 15 year old girl hailing from Ahmedabad who had sustained months of harassment, including trespass into property and physical assault by local right-wing men two days before her demise. The harassment arose in response to her family’s attempt to buy a house in a Hindu neighbourhood. Despite many criticising this Act for furthering structural bias and outrightly enabling ghettoisation and residential segregation of Muslims in Gujarat, the Government of Rajasthan is envisioning its own version of the Act and has framed the Rajasthan Prohibition of Transfer of Immovable Property and Provisions for Protection of Tenants from Eviction from the Premises in Disturbed Areas Bill, 2026. Another state is now at the risk of witnessing institutional legitimisation of segregation, instead of prevention, and deepening religious and caste-based discrimination.

Source: The Wire Article on the suicide of Saniya Ansari

The Way Forward

The Act fails the test of proportionality and puts unreasonable restrictions on fundamental rights, as current real estate laws and regulations adequately deal with forced and distress sales, and there are far less restrictive options within already existing contract, criminal and anti-fraud laws. The DAA, passed initially to suppress distress sales and communal segregation, has fostered and cultivated division along the basis of religion at the expense of property rights. Judicial inertia has, too, allowed authorities to weaponize the law to enforce ghettoisation against Muslims. As we move forward, we must question if such a law is even required in the first place? I would argue that what was conceived as a temporary, exceptional measure has transformed into a permanent tool of governance, and it shows little evidence of adaptation to evolving social and urban realities over the decades. Even if one argues it is, it remains imperative that the declaration of an area as disturbed be made time-bound, perhaps through a sunset clause, and be based on objective criteria, for which definitions must be updated and made consistent with what they intend. Removal or amendment of Section 8, which states that the decision of the State Government shall be final, is particularly important; the exclusion of the jurisdiction of courts is prima facie unconstitutional and effectively allows for the erosion of housing rights, easily done in hiding from judicial review. Stringently reforming the Act is the bare minimum required to protect the constitutional rights of minorities in the State.