DNA: Mumbai: Friday,
March 21, 2014.
The Bombay
high court has struck down the chief minister's (CM's) discretionary quota to
allot houses in the state, calling the policy 'arbitrary, and illegal'. A
division bench of justices Abhay Oka and MS Sonak, in their 36-page judgment
said: "In case of allotment of flats under the 2 per cent and 5 per cent
discretionary quota, no steps were taken to provide equal opportunity to the
public to get the benefits. The state government treated the scheme as a
private venture."
The CM's
discretionary quota has been in effect since 1986 with the last policy issued
in 2011. As per the policy, a person is eligible for a house under the quota if
he/she does not have a permanent house in the city. However, over the years,
several cases of double allotment came to light. People belonging to the same
family were either allotted flats in the same city or different cities. On the
other hand, several eligible people, who had applied for flats under the
scheme, remained on the waiting list.
As many as 12
petitions were filed separately which were later clubbed by the court to pass a
common order. The petitions had challenged the government's quota policy.
Advocate Uday Warunjikar, appearing for one of the petitioners, Manohar Bait,
argued that the information he got under the RTI Act stated that most of the
beneficiaries of this scheme were either related to an MLA or an MP or were
associated with political parties.
Warunjikar
said even when the scheme was meant for the general public, it was not known to
many since it was not advertised. The high court accepted the argument and
said: "In several Supreme Court orders, it is stated that distribution of
'state largesse' should be done equally and reasonably. It should not be
arbitrary; applications should be invited from the public, and advertisements
should be given so as to offer an equal opportunity to avail the benefit of the
same."
The court
dismissed the prayers seeking allotment of flats under the quota since there is
no policy in existence.
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