In a recent development, the heirs of the late Maharaja Dr. Karni Singh have approached the Delhi High Court, seeking overdue rent payments from the Central Government for the use of Bikaner House in New Delhi. The property dispute surfaced after a bench, comprising Chief Justice D.K. Upadhyaya and Justice Tushar Rao Gedela, reviewed an appeal against a prior ruling by a single judge who denied any relief to the heirs.
The case, involving significant historical and legal intricacies, was set in motion when the single judge confirmed on February 24 that the Rajasthan government retains “full and absolute rights” over Bikaner House. This ruling also dismissed the claims of the Maharaja’s heirs for rent arrears spanning from 1991 to 2014, indicating that the heirs failed to demonstrate a legal entitlement to the property or the rent from it.
According to court documents, the initial payments to the Maharaja were made on an ex-gratia basis by the Centre, and the single judge questioned whether the legal heirs could legitimately claim these funds post Maharaja’s demise in 1991. This point was emphasized during Tuesday’s hearing, with the court probing the maintainability of the petition and the timeframe for such claims, suggesting that pursuing old grievances could not continue indefinitely.
The counsel for the Maharaja’s heirs argued that the Central Government had not explicitly refused to make the payments, which were owed to the heirs based on prior commitments. “They kept saying I will pay. There is no denial of duty to pay,” the counsel argued, pointing out that the single judge did not fully consider all pertinent materials in the case.
In the earlier setup, before the Maharaja’s death, the Government of India had communicated in 1951 that one-third of the rent collected from Bikaner House, which was developed between 1922 and 1949 by the predecessor of Dr. Karni Singh, would be disbursed to the Maharaja’s Estate. However, following his death, the payments ceased, and the Central Government vacated the property in 2014 after a Supreme Court directive favored the Rajasthan government’s claim to possession.
