LUCKNOW: The UP government on Friday empowered itself to recover the cost of property damaged during protests, riots and rallies from the accused by promulgating the 'UP Recovery of Public and Private Property Ordinance'.The ordinance was cleared by the Yogi Adityanath cabinet even as a three-judge Supreme Court bench is slated to hear the state's special leave petition next week challenging the Allahabad high court order which asked the government to remove hoardings carrying names, pictures and addresses of 57 protesters accused of damaging properties during anti-CAA violence in Lucknow on December 19.After large-scale violence in December during the protests in which property worth crores was damaged, the government had served recovery notices on the accused, citing a 2009 order of the Supreme Court.State finance minister Suresh Khanna told newspersons after the cabinet meeting that the SC, in reference to writ petition 77/2007, had said in 2009 that a strict law was needed to recover costs if private or public property had been damaged during protests like political rallies, strikes and sit-ins."Following that order, we have cleared the ordinance. The next step is to draft the rules for this law which will also be cleared by the cabinet," Khanna said, adding that in the 2009 order, the SC had talked about constituting a recovery tribunal to recover losses to government and private properties in political and illegal agitations in the country.Although the rules for recovery of cost of damage to property are yet to be framed, a UP government source said that "posting of pictures and other details of accused in such cases" is likely to be included.As anti-CAA protests broke out across UP, Yogi had said that the government would recover the cost for the destruction of property from those who indulged in violence. The government served more than 500 notices on people across the state in the aftermath of the December violence. Out of these, 57 notices were issued just in Lucknow.After SC's 2009 order, the Allahabad high court also issued a similar order on December 2, 2010 which was followed by a government order (GO) on January 8, 2011 during the BSP regime. The 2011 GO said: "...the damage suffered to public property shall be assessed and the concerned department, local body, public corporation etc, i.e. the owner of the property, shall file a claim for realisation of such amount from the political parties/persons (who called for agitation/procession in which damage takes place)".It adds that if the person or persons against whom the claim is filed were responsible for the loss, "the amount assessed and awarded by such competent authority shall be realised, if not paid on its own by the person responsible within such time as directed, as arrears of land revenue".The Allahahad high court took suo motu cognizance of these 'name and shame' hoardings and directed the government to pull down the banners immediately. However, the government challenged the order in the Supreme Court.Referring to SC's 2009 order, government spokesperson Sidharth Nath Singh said: "The SC had asked for a law to be made and we are only respecting that. The CM's decision to challenge the HC order will ensure that such incidents of violent protests will not take place in the state again."