The Supreme Court yesterday affirmed a High Court verdict that justified a government decision to evict Urdu-speaking people, who live outside their designated camps, from government land.

The apex court also upheld the HC directive which ruled that those, who are living within the Geneva camp in Mohammadpur of Dhaka and registered camps at any part of the country and having national identity cards, should be rehabilitated by the government.

A four-member bench of the Appellate Division headed by Chief Justice SK Sinha passed the order after hearing two separate leave to appeal petitions filed by Sadakat Khan, president of Urdu Speaking Peoples Youth Rehabilitation Movement, challenging the HC verdict.

Advocate Abdul Momin Manik, a lawyer for the Ministry of Housing and Public Works, told The Daily Star that the Appellate Division of the SC has upheld the HC verdict which has also said that the government should prepare list of those Urdu-speaking people who are poor and victim and should rehabilitate them.

Sadakat Khan said the people will suffer a lot if the government evicts them without ensuring their rehabilitation.

On March 29 this year, the HC gave the verdict after hearing nine writ petitions challenging the government's eviction move.

Some Urdu-speaking people and Odhikar, a rights organisation, filed the petitions at different times between 2001 and 2011.

Seven lakh Urdu speakers live in and outside 116 camps across the country, and approximately 90 percent of them have the national ID cards, Sadakat Khan, one of the petitioners, said.

Around three lakh of them live outside the camps, said Khan, also claiming that the Urdu-speaking people owned houses and land before the Liberation War in 1971 but the government and the Red Crescent moved them to the camps after the war.