JAMMU: In a landmark judgment, Division Bench of the High Court comprising Chief Justice Pankaj Mithal and Justice Rajnesh Oswal has quashed 8 allotments as well as consequential rent deeds/rent agreements made by the Jammu Municipal Corporation in respect of Municipal Flats situated at Gandhi Nagar, Jammu.
The DB also directed the allottees to vacate the premises in their respective occupation within a period of six months from the date of this order. About municipal shops (587), flats (191) and garages (30), the DB directed the Union Territory Government and Municipal Corporation Jammu to examine the individual cases and proceed in accordance with the law laid down by the Apex Court in numerous decisions and take appropriate action within a period of six months, extendable by another period of six months only. The beneficiaries/allottees of these JMC flats include Jeet Lal Gupta, former Commissioner Secretary to Government, Housing and Urban Development Department; R S Jamwal, former Joint Commissioner (Adm) JMC; Madan Mohan Khajuria, ex-PA to Commissioner JMC; Narender Sharma, President PEACE (NGO); Surinder Kumar, PSO to former Commissioner Secretary Housing and Urban Development Department; Balbir Singh (driver, SUDA); Bharat Bhushan (driver, JMC); Chain Singh and Kharati Lal.
These significant directions were passed in the much publicised PIL filed by a practising lawyer Irtiza Mushtaq Salaria highlighting illegal allotment of shops/flats/garages and other municipal assets by Jammu Municipal Corporation. In the PIL specific challenge was thrown to the 8 allotments of prime municipal flats situated at posh Gandhi Nagar area. After hearing Advocate Sheikh Shakeel Ahmed with Advocates Rahul Raina, Supriya Chouhan, M Zulkarnain Chowdhary, Naveed H Naik and Muzzaffar Ali Shah appearing for the petitioner whereas Senior AAG S S Nanda for Housing & Urban Development Department, Advocate Sachin Gupta for JMC, Senior Advocate Abhinav Sharma with Parkhi Parihar, Senior Advocate R K Gupta with Ratish Mahajan, Senior Advocate U K Jalali with Poonam Kaul, Advocates S K Anand, K K Jandial, Adarsh Sharma and Ajay Bakshi appearing for the allottees/beneficiaries, the Division Bench after referring several judgments of the Apex Court observed, “we have reached to an un-escapable conclusion that impugned allotments are illegal and contrary to principle of equality as enshrined in Article 14 of the Constitution of India”.
Earlier, Advocate Sheikh Shakeel Ahmed vehemently argued that in absence of the policy, the Municipal Corporation has adopted a pick and choose policy in allotting the flats/quarters to the blue eyed persons and the municipal assets being a public property could not have been distributed in a manner as has been done by the JMC. He further submitted that so far as employees are concerned, it were not only the private respondents who being the officials were entitled to accommodation but there were other officials also, who too had right to be allotted the municipal assets.
“In a posh area of Gandhi Nagar, the JMC has allotted a flat to former Commissioner Secretary H&UDD at a nominal rent of Rs 990 per month for a period of 40 years and similarly a cattle pound at Gandhi Nagar was converted into flat after making a renovation/repair to the tune of Rs 35 lakhs and thereafter the same was allotted to former Joint Commissioner (Adm), JMC R S Jamwal at modest rent”, Advocate Ahmed said.
“These instances of loot of municipal flats/assets is just a tip of the ice-berg and the valuable assets of the Corporation have been gifted in similar fashion to various ex-employees of the Corporation and politicians without any criteria at peanuts’ rates”, he added.
