Calcutta High Court (Appellete Side)
Govinda Prasad Ladia And Others vs Wbhidc Limited And Others on 13 May, 2015
Author: Sanjib Banerjee
Bench: Sanjib Banerjee
IN THE HIGH COURT AT CALCUTTA
CONSTITUTIONAL WRIT JURISDICTION
APPELLATE SIDE
WP 2522 (W) of 2014
With
CAN 6406 of 2014
GOVINDA PRASAD LADIA AND OTHERS
-VERSUS-
WBHIDC LIMITED AND OTHERS
For the Petitioners: Mr Arunava Ghosh, Adv.,
Mr Anindya Lahiri, Adv.,
Mr Mainak Ganguly, Adv.,
Mr Pragyadeepta Ray, Adv.,
Mr Puspal Chakraborty, Adv.
For the WBHIDC Ltd: Mr Jayanta Kr. Mitra, Advocate General,
Mr Jishnu Chowdhury, Adv.,
Mr Debanjan Mandal, Adv.,
Mr Chayan Gupta, Adv.,
Mr Sandip Dasgupta, Adv.
For the State: Mr Abhrotosh Majumder, Government Pleader.
For the Private
Respondent No. 16: Mr N. C. Bihani, Adv.,
Ms P. B. Bihani, Adv.
AND
WP 37304 (W) of 2013
MAINAK SARKAR
-VERSUS-
STATE OF WEST BENGAL AND OTHERS
For the Petitioner: Mr Ashok Sarkar, Adv.,
Mr Subrata Banerjee, Adv.
For the WBHIDC Ltd: Mr Jayanta Kr. Mitra, Advocate General,
Mr Jishnu Chowdhury, Adv.,
Mr Debanjan Mandal, Adv.,
Mr Chayan Gupta, Adv.,
Mr Sandip Dasgupta, Adv.
For the State: Mr Abhrotosh Majumder, Government Pleader.
AND
WP 5158 (W) of 2013
SHIVMANGAL SECURITIES (P) LIMITED AND OTHERS
-VERSUS-
WBHIDC LIMITED AND OTHERS
For the Petitioners: Mr Arunava Ghosh, Adv.,
Mr Anindya Lahiri, Adv.,
Mr Mainak Ganguly, Adv.,
Mr Pragyadeepta Ray, Adv.,
Mr Puspal Chakraborty, Adv.
For the WBHIDC Ltd: Mr Jayanta Kr. Mitra, Advocate General,
Mr Jishnu Chowdhury, Adv.,
Mr Debanjan Mandal, Adv.,
Mr Chayan Gupta, Adv.,
Mr Sandip Dasgupta, Adv.
For the State: Mr Abhrotosh Majumder, Government Pleader.
AND
WP 2531 (W) of 2012
BALURGHAT MUNICIPALITY AND ANOTHER
-VERSUS-
WBHIDC LIMITED AND OTHERS
For the WBHIDC Ltd: Mr Jayanta Kr. Mitra, Advocate General,
Mr Jishnu Chowdhury, Adv.,
Mr Debanjan Mandal, Adv.,
Mr Chayan Gupta, Adv.,
Mr Sandip Dasgupta, Adv.
For the State: Mr Abhrotosh Majumder, Government Pleader.
AND
WP 28365 (W) of 2013
RDB TEXTILES LIMITED AND ANOTHER
-VERSUS-
WBHIDC LIMITED AND OTHERS
For the Petitioners: Mr Arunava Ghosh, Adv.,
Mr Anindya Lahiri, Adv.,
Mr Mainak Ganguly, Adv.,
Mr Pragyadeepta Ray, Adv.,
Mr Puspal Chakraborty, Adv.,
Mr Pranav Sharma, Adv.
For the WBHIDC Ltd: Mr Jayanta Kr. Mitra, Advocate General,
Mr Jishnu Chowdhury, Adv.,
Mr Debanjan Mandal, Adv.,
Mr Chayan Gupta, Adv.,
Mr Sandip Dasgupta, Adv.
For the State: Mr Abhrotosh Majumder, Government Pleader.
AND
WP 30170 (W) of 2013
MANAKSIA LIMITED AND OTHERS
-VERSUS-
WBHIDC LIMITED AND OTHERS
For the Petitioners: Mr Arunava Ghosh, Adv.,
Mr Anindya Lahiri, Adv.,
Mr Mainak Ganguly, Adv.,
Mr Pragyadeepta Ray, Adv.,
Mr Puspal Chakraborty, Adv.,
Mr Manoj Malhotra, Adv.
For the WBHIDC Ltd: Mr Jayanta Kr. Mitra, Advocate General,
Mr Jishnu Chowdhury, Adv.,
Mr Debanjan Mandal, Adv.,
Mr Chayan Gupta, Adv.,
Mr Sandip Dasgupta, Adv.
For the State: Mr Abhrotosh Majumder, Government Pleader.
AND
WP 4737 (W) of 2014
EMC LIMITED AND ANOTHER
-VERSUS-
WBHIDC LIMITED AND OTHERS
For the Petitioners: Mr Arunava Ghosh, Adv.,
Mr Anindya Lahiri, Adv.,
Mr Mainak Ganguly, Adv.,
Mr Pragyadeepta Ray, Adv.,
Mr Puspal Chakraborty, Adv,
Mr Pranav Sharma, Adv.
For the WBHIDC Ltd: Mr Jayanta Kr. Mitra, Advocate General,
Mr Jishnu Chowdhury, Adv.,
Mr Debanjan Mandal, Adv.,
Mr Chayan Gupta, Adv.,
Mr Sandip Dasgupta, Adv.
For the State: Mr Abhrotosh Majumder, Government Pleader.
For the Private
Respondents: Mr N. C. Bihani, Adv.,
Ms P. B. Bihani, Adv.
AND
WP 3162 (W) of 2014
ISHA HOLDINGS LIMITED AND ANOTHER
-VERSUS-
STATE OF WEST BENGAL AND OTHERS
For the Petitioners: Ms Sutapa Dutta, Adv.
For the WBHIDC Ltd: Mr Jayanta Kr. Mitra, Advocate General,
Mr Jishnu Chowdhury, Adv.,
Mr Debanjan Mandal, Adv.,
Mr Chayan Gupta, Adv.,
Mr Sandip Dasgupta, Adv.
For the State: Mr Abhrotosh Majumder, Government Pleader.
AND
WP 2565 (W) of 2014
MANI SQUARE LIMITED AND ANOTHER
-VERSUS-
WBHIDC LIMITED AND OTHERS
For the Petitioners: Mr Surajit Nath Mitra, Sr Adv.,
Mr Dipayan Choudhury, Adv.
For the WBHIDC Ltd: Mr Jayanta Kr. Mitra, Advocate General,
Mr Jishnu Chowdhury, Adv.,
Mr Debanjan Mandal, Adv.,
Mr Chayan Gupta, Adv.,
Mr Sandip Dasgupta, Adv.
For the State: Mr Abhrotosh Majumder, Government Pleader.
AND
WP 2521 (W) of 2014
MOHANLAL AGARWAL AND OTHERS
-VERSUS-
WBHIDC LIMITED AND OTHERS
For the Petitioners: Mr Arunava Ghosh, Adv.,
Mr Anindya Lahiri, Adv.,
Mr Mainak Ganguly, Adv.,
Mr Pragyadeepta Ray, Adv.,
Mr Puspal Chakraborty, Adv.
For the WBHIDC Ltd: Mr Jayanta Kr. Mitra, Advocate General,
Mr Jishnu Chowdhury, Adv.,
Mr Debanjan Mandal, Adv.,
Mr Chayan Gupta, Adv.,
Mr Sandip Dasgupta, Adv.
For the State: Mr Abhrotosh Majumder, Government Pleader.
AND
WP 2523 (W) of 2014
PRIME STEEL JUNCTION (P) LIMITED AND OTHERS
-VERSUS-
WBHIDC LIMITED AND OTHERS
For the Petitioners: Mr Arunava Ghosh, Adv.,
Mr Anindya Lahiri, Adv.,
Mr Mainak Ganguly, Adv.,
Mr Pragyadeepta Ray, Adv.,
Mr Puspal Chakraborty, Adv.
For the WBHIDC Ltd: Mr Jayanta Kr. Mitra, Advocate General,
Mr Jishnu Chowdhury, Adv.,
Mr Debanjan Mandal, Adv.,
Mr Chayan Gupta, Adv.,
Mr Sandip Dasgupta, Adv.
For the State: Mr Abhrotosh Majumder, Government Pleader.
For the Private
Respondents: Mr N. C. Bihani, Adv.,
Ms P. B. Bihani, Adv.
AND
WP 36986 (W) of 2013
EXCELSIOR INDIA (P) LIMITED
-VERSUS-
WBHIDC LIMITED AND OTHERS
For the Petitioner: Mr Probal Kr. Mukherjee, Sr Adv.,
Mr Rajdeep Bhattacharya, Adv.
For the WBHIDC Ltd: Mr Jayanta Kr. Mitra, Advocate General,
Mr Jishnu Chowdhury, Adv.,
Mr Debanjan Mandal, Adv.,
Mr Chayan Gupta, Adv.,
Mr Sandip Dasgupta, Adv.
For the State: Mr Abhrotosh Majumder, Government Pleader.
AND
WP 6011 (W) of 2014
ABC FOUNDATION AND ANOTHER
-VERSUS-
STATE OF WEST BENGAL AND OTHERS
For the WBHIDC Ltd: Mr Jayanta Kr. Mitra, Advocate General,
Mr Jishnu Chowdhury, Adv.,
Mr Debanjan Mandal, Adv.,
Mr Chayan Gupta, Adv.,
Mr Sandip Dasgupta, Adv.
For the State: Mr Abhrotosh Majumder, Government Pleader,
Mr Tapas Ballav Mandal, Adv.
AND
WP 36271 (W) of 2013
SWEET "N" SOUR AND ANOTHER
-VERSUS-
WBHIDC LIMITED AND OTHERS
For the Petitioners: Mr Arunava Ghosh, Adv.,
Mr Anindya Lahiri, Adv.,
Mr Mainak Ganguly, Adv.,
Mr Pragyadeepta Ray, Adv.,
Mr Puspal Chakraborty, Adv.,
For the WBHIDC Ltd: Mr Jayanta Kr. Mitra, Advocate General,
Mr Jishnu Chowdhury, Adv.,
Mr Debanjan Mandal, Adv.,
Mr Chayan Gupta, Adv.,
Mr Sandip Dasgupta, Adv.
For the State: Mr Abhrotosh Majumder, Government Pleader.
AND
WP 4574 (W) of 2012
With
CAN 9338 of 2012
SUKHENDU GHOSH
-VERSUS-
STATE OF WEST BENGAL AND OTHERS
For the Petitioner: Mr Prantick Ghosh, Adv.
For the WBHIDC Ltd: Mr Jayanta Kr. Mitra, Advocate General,
Mr Jishnu Chowdhury, Adv.,
Mr Debanjan Mandal, Adv.,
Mr Chayan Gupta, Adv.,
Mr Sandip Dasgupta, Adv.
For the State: Mr Abhrotosh Majumder, Government Pleader.
AND
WP 6440 (W) of 2014
NITIN MITTAL
-VERSUS-
WBHIDC LIMITED AND OTHERS
For the Petitioner: Mr Arunava Ghosh, Adv.,
Mr Anindya Lahiri, Adv.,
Mr Mainak Ganguly, Adv.,
Mr Pragyadeepta Ray, Adv.,
Mr Puspal Chakraborty, Adv.,
Ms Riti Basu, Adv.,
Mr S.K. Singhi, Adv.,
Mr Ashique Mondal, Adv.
For the WBHIDC Ltd: Mr Jayanta Kr. Mitra, Advocate General,
Mr Jishnu Chowdhury, Adv.,
Mr Debanjan Mandal, Adv.,
Mr Chayan Gupta, Adv.,
Mr Sandip Dasgupta, Adv.
For the State: Mr Abhrotosh Majumder, Government Pleader.
For the Private
Respondent No. 16: Mr N. C. Bihani, Adv.,
Ms P. B. Bihani, Adv.
AND
WP 21411 (W) of 2013
DR. ROHINI LAL MUNI CHAKRAVARTI AND OTHERS
-VERSUS-
WBHIDC LIMITED AND OTHERS
For the Petitioners: Mr Arunava Ghosh, Adv.,
Mr Sukumar Bhattacharyya, Adv.,
Ms Vineeta Meharia, Adv.,
Mr Dipendra Nath Chunder, Adv.
For the WBHIDC Ltd: Mr Jayanta Kr. Mitra, Advocate General,
Mr Jishnu Chowdhury, Adv.,
Mr Debanjan Mandal, Adv.,
Mr Chayan Gupta, Adv.,
Mr Sandip Dasgupta, Adv.
For the State: Mr Abhrotosh Majumder, Government Pleader.
AND
WP 3132 (W) of 2012
RAJPATH CONTRACTORS AND ENGINEERS LIMITED AND ANOTHER
-VERSUS-
STATE OF WEST BENGAL AND OTHERS
For the Petitioners: Mr Rabindra Nath Das, Sr Adv.,
Mr Durga Prasad Dutta, Adv.,
Mr Sumanta Ganguly, Adv.
For the WBHIDC Ltd: Mr Jayanta Kr. Mitra, Advocate General,
Mr Jishnu Chowdhury, Adv.,
Mr Debanjan Mandal, Adv.,
Mr Chayan Gupta, Adv.,
Mr Sandip Dasgupta, Adv.
For the State: Mr Abhrotosh Majumder, Government Pleader.
AND
WP 7746 (W) of 2012
HINDUSTAN STEEL WORKS CONSTRUCTION LIMITED AND ANOTHER
-VERSUS-
STATE OF WEST BEGAL AND OTHERS
For the WBHIDC Ltd: Mr Jayanta Kr. Mitra, Advocate General,
Mr Jishnu Chowdhury, Adv.,
Mr Debanjan Mandal, Adv.,
Mr Chayan Gupta, Adv.,
Mr Sandip Dasgupta, Adv.
For the State: Mr Abhrotosh Majumder, Government Pleader.
AND
WP 7752 (W) of 2012
KIDZ HEALTHCARE (P) LIMITED AND ANOTHER
-VERSUS-
WBHIDC LIMITED AND OTHERS
For the Petitioners: Mr S. N. Mookherjee, Sr Adv.,
Mr Kishore Datta, Sr Adv.,
Ms Sumita Shaw, Adv.
For the WBHIDC Ltd: Mr Jayanta Kr. Mitra, Advocate General,
Mr Jishnu Chowdhury, Adv.,
Mr Debanjan Mandal, Adv.,
Mr Chayan Gupta, Adv.,
Mr Sandip Dasgupta, Adv.
For the State: Mr Abhrotosh Majumder, Government Pleader.
AND
WP 3171(W) of 2012
AWARDS INTERNATIONAL AND ANOTHER
-VERSUS-
STATE OF WEST BENGAL AND OTHERS
For the WBHIDC Ltd: Mr Jayanta Kr. Mitra, Advocate General,
Mr Jishnu Chowdhury, Adv.,
Mr Debanjan Mandal, Adv.,
Mr Chayan Gupta, Adv.,
Mr Sandip Dasgupta, Adv.
For the State: Mr Abhrotosh Majumder, Government Pleader.
AND
WP 22170 (W) of 2012
DREMLAND INFRABUILD (P) LIMITED AND ANOTHER
-VERSUS-
STATE OF WEST BENGAL AND OTHERS
For the Petitioners: Mr Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya, Sr Adv.,
Ms Sumitra Das, Adv.,
Ms Kasturi Tarafdar, Adv.
For the WBHIDC Ltd: Mr Jayanta Kr. Mitra, Advocate General,
Mr Jishnu Chowdhury, Adv.,
Mr Debanjan Mandal, Adv.,
Mr Chayan Gupta, Adv.,
Mr Sandip Dasgupta, Adv.
For the State: Mr Abhrotosh Majumder, Government Pleader,
Mr Sadananda Ganguly, Adv.,
Mr Debapratim Banerjee, Adv.
AND
WP 24721(W) of 2012
ECL AGROTECH LIMITED AND ANOTHER
-VERSUS-
STATE OF WEST BENGAL AND OTHERS
For the Petitioners: Mr Hiranmay Bhattacharyya, Adv.,
Mr Mrinal Kanti Ghosh, Adv.
For the WBHIDC Ltd: Mr Jayanta Kr. Mitra, Advocate General,
Mr Jishnu Chowdhury, Adv.,
Mr Debanjan Mandal, Adv.,
Mr Chayan Gupta, Adv.,
Mr Sandip Dasgupta, Adv.
For the State: Mr Abhrotosh Majumder, Government Pleader.
AND
WP 9162 (W) of 2014
BENGAL BRICK FIELD OWNERS ASSOCIATION AND OTHERS
-VERSUS-
WBHIDC LIMITED AND OTHERS
For the Petitioners: Mr Arunava Ghosh, Adv.,
Mr Anindya Lahiri, Adv.,
Mr Mainak Ganguly, Adv.,
Mr Pragyadeepta Ray, Adv.,
Mr Puspal Chakraborty, Adv.
For the WBHIDC Ltd: Mr Jayanta Kr. Mitra, Advocate General,
Mr Jishnu Chowdhury, Adv.,
Mr Debanjan Mandal, Adv.,
Mr Chayan Gupta, Adv.,
Mr Sandip Dasgupta, Adv.
For the State: Mr Abhrotosh Majumder, Government Pleader.
For the Private
Respondent No. 16: Mr N. C. Bihani, Adv.,
Ms P. B. Bihani, Adv.
AND
WP 1992 (W) of 2014
MADHU AGARWAL
-VERSUS-
WBHIDC LIMITED AND OTHERS
For the WBHIDC Ltd: Mr Jayanta Kr. Mitra, Advocate General,
Mr Jishnu Chowdhury, Adv.,
Mr Debanjan Mandal, Adv.,
Mr Chayan Gupta, Adv.,
Mr Sandip Dasgupta, Adv.
For the State: Mr Abhrotosh Majumder, Government Pleader,
Mr Subhabrata Datta, Adv.
AND
WP 8059 (W) of 2012
MUKTI TIRTHA ANDAMAN COOPERATIVE HOUSING SOCIETY LIMITED
-VERSUS-
WBHIDC LIMITED AND OTHERS
For the Petitioner: Mr Hirak K. Mitra, Sr Adv.,
Mr Probal Kr. Mukherjee, Sr Adv.,
Mr Rajdeep Bhattacharya, Adv.
For the WBHIDC Ltd: Mr Jayanta Kr. Mitra, Advocate General,
Mr Jishnu Chowdhury, Adv.,
Mr Debanjan Mandal, Adv.,
Mr Chayan Gupta, Adv.,
Mr Sandip Dasgupta, Adv.
For the State: Mr Abhrotosh Majumder, Government Pleader,
Mr Subhabrata Datta, Adv.
AND
WP 7084 (W) of 2012
DACCA OUSHADHALAYA (P) LIMITED AND ANOTHER
-VERSUS-
WBHIDC LIMITED AND OTHERS
For the Petitioners: Mr Arunava Ghosh, Adv.,
Mr Anindya Lahiri, Adv.,
Mr Mainak Ganguly, Adv.,
Mr Pragyadeepta Ray, Adv.,
Mr Puspal Chakraborty, Adv.
For the WBHIDC Ltd: Mr Jayanta Kr. Mitra, Advocate General,
Mr Jishnu Chowdhury, Adv.,
Mr Debanjan Mandal, Adv.,
Mr Chayan Gupta, Adv.,
Mr Sandip Dasgupta, Adv.
For the State: Mr Abhrotosh Majumder, Government Pleader,
Mr Subhabrata Datta, Adv.
AND
WP 2395 (W) of 2014
ADHUNIK INFRASTRUCTURE (P) LIMITED AND OTHERS
-VERSUS-
STATE OF WEST BENGAL AND OTHERS
For the Petitioners: Ms Sutapa Sanyal, Adv.,
Ms Srinanda Bose, Adv.,
Mr Arindam Banerjee, Adv.,
Mr Zulfiqur Ali, Adv.
For the WBHIDC Ltd: Mr Jayanta Kr. Mitra, Advocate General,
Mr Jishnu Chowdhury, Adv.,
Mr Debanjan Mandal, Adv.,
Mr Chayan Gupta, Adv.,
Mr Sandip Dasgupta, Adv.
For the State: Mr Abhrotosh Majumder, Government Pleader.
AND
WP 21310 (W) of 2011
BAG ADVISORY SERVICES (P) LIMITED AND ANOTHER
-VERSUS-
WBHIDC LIMITED AND OTHERS
For the Petitioners: Mr Arunava Ghosh, Adv.,
Mr Anindya Lahiri, Adv.,
Mr Mainak Ganguly, Adv.,
Mr Pragyadeepta Ray, Adv.,
Mr Puspal Chakraborty, Adv.,
Ms Pausali Banerjee, Adv.
For the WBHIDC Ltd: Mr Jayanta Kr. Mitra, Advocate General,
Mr Jishnu Chowdhury, Adv.,
Mr Debanjan Mandal, Adv.,
Mr Chayan Gupta, Adv.,
Mr Sandip Dasgupta, Adv.
For the State: Mr Abhrotosh Majumder, Government Pleader.
AND
WP 3816 (W) of 2012
VISWAKARMA NIRMAN (P) LIMITED AND ANOTHER
-VERSUS-
STATE OF WEST BENGAL AND OTHERS
For the WBHIDC Ltd: Mr Jayanta Kr. Mitra, Advocate General,
Mr Jishnu Chowdhury, Adv.,
Mr Debanjan Mandal, Adv.,
Mr Chayan Gupta, Adv.,
Mr Sandip Dasgupta, Adv.
For the State: Mr Abhrotosh Majumder, Government Pleader.
AND
WP 4903 (W) of 2012
DR. ARUN KUMAR MAJI AND OTHERS
-VERSUS-
STATE OF WEST BENGAL AND OTHERS
For the WBHIDC Ltd: Mr Jayanta Kr. Mitra, Advocate General,
Mr Chayan Gupta, Adv.,
Mr Sandip Dasgupta, Adv.
For the State: Mr Abhrotosh Majumder, Government Pleader.
AND
WP 4325 (W) of 2014
HI-TECH HATCH FRESH (P) LIMITED
-VERSUS-
WBHIDC LIMITED AND OTHERS
For the Petitioner: Mr Arunava Ghosh, Adv.,
Mr Anindya Lahiri, Adv.,
Mr Mainak Ganguly, Adv.,
Mr Pragyadeepta Ray, Adv.,
Mr Puspal Chakraborty, Adv.
For the WBHIDC Ltd: Mr Jayanta Kr. Mitra, Advocate General,
Mr Jishnu Chowdhury, Adv.,
Mr Debanjan Mandal, Adv.,
Mr Chayan Gupta, Adv.,
Mr Sandip Dasgupta, Adv.
For the State: Mr Abhrotosh Majumder, Government Pleader.
For the Private
Respondent No. 16: Mr N. C. Bihani, Adv.,
Ms P. B. Bihani, Adv.
AND
WP 30078 (W) of 2013
NATREON INC. AND ANOTHER
-VERSUS-
STATE OF WEST BENGAL AND OTHERS
For the WBHIDC Ltd: Mr Jayanta Kr. Mitra, Advocate General,
Mr Jishnu Chowdhury, Adv.,
Mr Debanjan Mandal, Adv.,
Mr Chayan Gupta, Adv.,
Mr Sandip Dasgupta, Adv.
For the State: Mr Abhrotosh Majumder, Government Pleader.
AND
WP 13956 (W) of 2014
PRIYANKA AGARWAL AND ANOTHER
-VERSUS-
WBHIDC LIMITED AND OTHERS
For the Petitioners: Mr Kishore Datta, Sr Adv.,
Anuj Singh, Adv.
For the WBHIDC Ltd: Mr Jayanta Kr. Mitra, Advocate General,
Mr Jishnu Chowdhury, Adv.,
Mr Debanjan Mandal, Adv.,
Mr Chayan Gupta, Adv.,
Mr Sandip Dasgupta, Adv.
For the State: Mr Abhrotosh Majumder, Government Pleader.
AND
WP 27109 (W) of 2014
HIMADRI CONSTRUCTION COMPANY
-VERSUS-
STATE OF WEST BENGAL AND OTHERS
For the Petitioner: Mr Kishore Datta, Sr Adv.,
Ms Sumita Shaw, Adv.,
Mr Aditya Garodia, Adv.
For the WBHIDC Ltd: Mr Jayanta Kr. Mitra, Advocate General,
Mr Jishnu Chowdhury, Adv.,
Mr Debanjan Mandal, Adv.,
Mr Chayan Gupta, Adv.,
Mr Sandip Dasgupta, Adv.
For the State: Mr Abhrotosh Majumder, Government Pleader.
Ms Smita Das De, Adv.,
Ms Chaitaly Bhattacharya, Adv.
AND
WP 7468 (W) of 2014
PRABIR KUMAR TALUKDAR
-VERSUS-
WBHIDC LIMITED AND OTHERS
For the Petitioner: Mr Arunava Ghosh, Adv.,
Mr Anindya Lahiri, Adv.
For the WBHIDC Ltd: Mr Jayanta Kr. Mitra, Advocate General,
Mr Jishnu Chowdhury, Adv.,
Mr Debanjan Mandal, Adv.,
Mr Chayan Gupta, Adv.,
Mr Sandip Dasgupta, Adv.
For the State: Mr Abhrotosh Majumder, Government Pleader.
AND
WP 65 (W) of 2014
KALPANA MISTRY (SARKAR) AND ANOTHER
-VERSUS-
WBHIDC LIMITED AND OTHERS
For the Petitioners: Mr Arunava Ghosh, Adv.,
Mr Anindya Lahiri, Adv.,
Mr Mainak Ganguly, Adv.,
Mr Pragyadeepta Ray, Adv.,
Mr Puspal Chakraborty, Adv.
For the WBHIDC Ltd: Mr Jayanta Kr. Mitra, Advocate General,
Mr Jishnu Chowdhury, Adv.,
Mr Debanjan Mandal, Adv.,
Mr Chayan Gupta, Adv.,
Mr Sandip Dasgupta, Adv.
For the State: Mr Abhrotosh Majumder, Government Pleader.
AND
WP 67 (W) of 2014
MD. ABDUL KAYUM
-VERSUS-
WBHIDC LIMITED AND OTHERS
For the Petitioner: Mr Arunava Ghosh, Adv.,
Mr Anindya Lahiri, Adv.,
Mr Mainak Ganguly, Adv.,
Mr Pragyadeepta Ray, Adv.,
Mr Puspal Chakraborty, Adv.
For the WBHIDC Ltd: Mr Jayanta Kr. Mitra, Advocate General,
Mr Jishnu Chowdhury, Adv.,
Mr Debanjan Mandal, Adv.,
Mr Chayan Gupta, Adv.,
Mr Sandip Dasgupta, Adv.
For the State: Mr Abhrotosh Majumder, Government Pleader.
AND
WP 68 (W) of 2014
SUBHAJIT DASGUPTA AND ANOTHER
-VERSUS-
WBHIDC LIMITED AND OTHERS
For the Petitioners: Mr Arunava Ghosh, Adv.,
Mr Anindya Lahiri, Adv.,
Mr Mainak Ganguly, Adv.,
Mr Pragyadeepta Ray, Adv.,
Mr Puspal Chakraborty, Adv.
For the WBHIDC Ltd: Mr Jayanta Kr. Mitra, Advocate General,
Mr Jishnu Chowdhury, Adv.,
Mr Debanjan Mandal, Adv.,
Mr Chayan Gupta, Adv.,
Mr Sandip Dasgupta, Adv.
For the State: Mr Abhrotosh Majumder, Government Pleader.
AND
WP 70 (W) of 2014
TAPAN KUMAR SARKAR AND OTHERS
-VERSUS-
WBHIDC LIMITED AND OTHERS
For the Petitioners: Mr Arunava Ghosh, Adv.,
Mr Anindya Lahiri, Adv.,
Mr Mainak Ganguly, Adv.,
Mr Pragyadeepta Ray, Adv.,
Mr Puspal Chakraborty, Adv.
For the WBHIDC Ltd: Mr Jayanta Kr. Mitra, Advocate General,
Mr Jishnu Chowdhury, Adv.,
Mr Debanjan Mandal, Adv.,
Mr Chayan Gupta, Adv.,
Mr Sandip Dasgupta, Adv.
For the State: Mr Abhrotosh Majumder, Government Pleader.
AND
WP 37136 (W) of 2013
TRIJIT DAS AND OTHERS
-VERSUS-
WBHIDC LIMITED AND OTHERS
For the Petitioners: Mr Arunava Ghosh, Adv.,
Mr Anindya Lahiri, Adv.,
Mr Mainak Ganguly, Adv.,
Mr Pragyadeepta Ray, Adv.,
Mr Puspal Chakraborty, Adv.
For the WBHIDC Ltd: Mr Jayanta Kr. Mitra, Advocate General,
Mr Jishnu Chowdhury, Adv.,
Mr Debanjan Mandal, Adv.,
Mr Chayan Gupta, Adv.,
Mr Sandip Dasgupta, Adv.
For the State: Mr Abhrotosh Majumder, Government Pleader.
AND
WP 5562 (W) of 2014
SUNIL KUMAR PHADIKAR AND OTHERS
-VERSUS-
WBHIDC LIMITED AND OTHERS
For the Petitioners: Mr Arunava Ghosh, Adv.,
Mr Anindya Lahiri, Adv.,
Mr Mainak Ganguly, Adv.,
Mr Pragyadeepta Ray, Adv.,
Mr Puspal Chakraborty, Adv.
For the WBHIDC Ltd: Mr Jayanta Kr. Mitra, Advocate General,
Mr Jishnu Chowdhury, Adv.,
Mr Debanjan Mandal, Adv.,
Mr Chayan Gupta, Adv.,
Mr Sandip Dasgupta, Adv.
For the State: Mr Abhrotosh Majumder, Government Pleader.
Mr Sakya Sen, Adv.,
Mr Somnath Naskar, Adv.
AND
WP 5566 (W) of 2014
ASHIM KUMAR HALDER
-VERSUS-
WBHIDC LIMITED AND OTHERS
For the Petitioner: Mr Arunava Ghosh, Adv.,
Mr Anindya Lahiri, Adv.,
Mr Mainak Ganguly, Adv.,
Mr Pragyadeepta Ray, Adv.,
Mr Puspal Chakraborty, Adv.
For the WBHIDC Ltd: Mr Jayanta Kr. Mitra, Advocate General,
Mr Jishnu Chowdhury, Adv.,
Mr Debanjan Mandal, Adv.,
Mr Chayan Gupta, Adv.,
Mr Sandip Dasgupta, Adv.
For the State: Mr Abhrotosh Majumder, Government Pleader.
AND
WP 2735 (W) of 2014
PARTHA ACHARYYA
-VERSUS-
WBHIDC LIMITED AND OTHERS
For the Petitioner: Mr Prabal Kr. Mukherjee, Sr Adv.,
Mr Rajdeep Bhattacharya, Adv.
For the WBHIDC Ltd: Mr Jayanta Kr. Mitra, Advocate General,
Mr Jishnu Chowdhury, Adv.,
Mr Debanjan Mandal, Adv.,
Mr Chayan Gupta, Adv.,
Mr Sandip Dasgupta, Adv.
For the State: Mr Abhrotosh Majumder, Government Pleader,
Mr A. Mondal, Additional Government Pleader,
Ms Srilekha Bhattacharyya, Adv.
AND
WP 2558 (W) of 2014
ANUP MITRA
-VERSUS-
STATE OF WEST BENGAL AND OTHERS
For the Petitioner: Mr Soumya Majumder, Adv.
For the WBHIDC Ltd: Mr Jayanta Kr. Mitra, Advocate General,
Mr Jishnu Chowdhury, Adv.,
Mr Debanjan Mandal, Adv.,
Mr Chayan Gupta, Adv.,
Mr Sandip Dasgupta, Adv.
For the State: Mr Abhrotosh Majumder, Government Pleader.
AND
WP 34290 (W) of 2013
JHULAN DAS GUPTA AND ANOTHER
-VERSUS-
WBHIDC LIMITED AND OTHERS
For the Petitioners: Mr Probal Kr. Mukherjee, Sr Adv.,
Mr Rajdeep Bhattacharya, Adv.
For the WBHIDC Ltd: Mr Jayanta Kr. Mitra, Advocate General,
Mr Jishnu Chowdhury, Adv.,
Mr Debanjan Mandal, Adv.,
Mr Chayan Gupta, Adv.,
Mr Sandip Dasgupta, Adv.
For the State: Mr Abhrotosh Majumder, Government Pleader.
AND
WP 224 (W) of 2014
AJAY TIBREWAL AND OTHERS
-VERSUS-
STATE OF WEST BENGAL AND OTHERS
For the Petitioners: Mr Samanya Sengupta, Adv.,
Ms Sumita Mookerjee, Adv.,
Mr Jayanta Kr. Pain, Adv.,
Mr Chandan Kumar Lal, Adv.
For the WBHIDC Ltd: Mr Jayanta Kr. Mitra, Advocate General,
Mr Jishnu Chowdhury, Adv.,
Mr Debanjan Mandal, Adv.,
Mr Chayan Gupta, Adv.,
Mr Sandip Dasgupta, Adv.
For the State: Mr Abhrotosh Majumder, Government Pleader.
AND
WP 5550 (W) of 2012
MALLIKA DUTTA
-VERSUS-
WBHIDC LIMITED AND OTHERS
For the Petitioner: Mr Arunava Ghosh, Adv.,
Mr Anindya Lahiri, Adv.,
Mr Mainak Ganguly, Adv.,
Mr Pragyadeepta Ray, Adv.,
Mr Puspal Chakraborty, Adv.
For the WBHIDC Ltd: Mr Jayanta Kr. Mitra, Advocate General,
Mr Jishnu Chowdhury, Adv.,
Mr Debanjan Mandal, Adv.,
Mr Chayan Gupta, Adv.,
Mr Sandip Dasgupta, Adv.
For the State: Mr Abhrotosh Majumder, Government Pleader.
AND
WP 23157 (W) of 2012
ARUN KUMAR SAHA
-VERSUS-
WBHIDC LIMITED AND OTHERS
For the Petitioner: Mr Arunava Ghosh, Adv.,
Mr Anindya Lahiri, Adv.,
Mr Mainak Ganguly, Adv.,
Mr Pragyadeepta Ray, Adv.,
Mr Puspal Chakraborty, Adv.
For the WBHIDC Ltd: Mr Jayanta Kr. Mitra, Advocate General,
Mr Jishnu Chowdhury, Adv.,
Mr Debanjan Mandal, Adv.,
Mr Chayan Gupta, Adv.,
Mr Sandip Dasgupta, Adv.
For the State: Mr Abhrotosh Majumder, Government Pleader.
AND
WP 4470 (W) of 2012
ARINDAM RAY
-VERSUS-
STATE OF WEST BENGAL AND OTHERS
For the Petitioner: Mr Arunava Ghosh, Adv.,
Mr Anindya Lahiri, Adv.,
Mr Mainak Ganguly, Adv.,
Mr Pragyadeepta Ray, Adv.,
Mr Puspal Chakraborty, Adv.
For the WBHIDC Ltd: Mr Jayanta Kr. Mitra, Advocate General,
Mr Jishnu Chowdhury, Adv.,
Mr Debanjan Mandal, Adv.,
Mr Chayan Gupta, Adv.,
Mr Sandip Dasgupta, Adv.
For the State: Mr Abhrotosh Majumder, Government Pleader.
AND
WP 13996 (W) of 2013
RAMA PRASAD CHAKRABORTY
-VERSUS-
STATE OF WEST BENGAL AND OTHERS
For the Petitioner: Mr Arunava Ghosh, Adv.,
Mr Anindya Lahiri, Adv.,
Mr Mainak Ganguly, Adv.,
Mr Pragyadeepta Ray, Adv.,
Mr Puspal Chakraborty, Adv.,
Mr Madhusudan Saha Roy, Adv.,
Mr Debasish Sutradhar, Adv.
For the WBHIDC Ltd: Mr Jayanta Kr. Mitra, Advocate General,
Mr Jishnu Chowdhury, Adv.,
Mr Debanjan Mandal, Adv.,
Mr Chayan Gupta, Adv.,
Mr Sandip Dasgupta, Adv.
For the State: Mr Abhrotosh Majumder, Government Pleader.
AND
WP 3245 (W) of 2012
SHYAMAL SARKAR AND OTHERS
-VERSUS-
WBHIDC LIMITED AND OTHERS
For the Petitioners: Mr Soumya Majumder, Adv.,
Mr Anindya Lahiri, Adv.,
Mr Ujjal Kr. Bhattacharjee, Adv.
For the WBHIDC Ltd: Mr Jayanta Kr. Mitra, Advocate General,
Mr Jishnu Chowdhury, Adv.,
Mr Debanjan Mandal, Adv.,
Mr Chayan Gupta, Adv.,
Mr Sandip Dasgupta, Adv.
For the State: Mr Abhrotosh Majumder, Government Pleader.
AND
WP 12617(W) of 2012
ARAKSHA HOUSING CO-OPERATIVE SOCIETY LIMITED
-VERSUS-
STATE OF WEST BENGAL AND OTHERS
For the Petitioners: Mr Tapas Kumar Sinha, Adv.
For the WBHIDC Ltd: Mr Jayanta Kr. Mitra, Advocate General,
Mr Jishnu Chowdhury, Adv.,
Mr Debanjan Mandal, Adv.,
Mr Chayan Gupta, Adv.,
Mr Sandip Dasgupta, Adv.
For the State: Mr Abhrotosh Majumder, Government Pleader.
Mr Sahabuddin Sardan, Adv.,
Mr Murari Chakraborty, Adv.
AND
WP 36084 (W) of 2013
NARAYAN CHANDRA BANDYOPADHYAY AND ANOTHER
-VERSUS-
STATE OF WEST BENGAL AND OTHERS
For the Petitioners: Mr Indranil Nandi, Adv.,
Mr Deba Prasad Samanta, Adv.
For the WBHIDC Ltd: Mr Jayanta Kr. Mitra, Advocate General,
Mr Chayan Gupta, Adv.,
Mr Sandip Dasgupta, Adv.
For the State: Mr Abhrotosh Majumder, Government Pleader.
AND
WP 27353 (W) of 2013
RAJARSHI ROY
-VERSUS-
WBHIDC LIMITED AND OTHERS
For the Petitioner: Mr Arunava Ghosh, Adv.,
Mr Anindya Lahiri, Adv.,
Mr Mainak Ganguly, Adv.,
Mr Pragyadeepta Ray, Adv.,
Mr Puspal Chakraborty, Adv.
For the WBHIDC Ltd: Mr Jayanta Kr. Mitra, Advocate General,
Mr Jishnu Chowdhury, Adv.,
Mr Debanjan Mandal, Adv.,
Mr Chayan Gupta, Adv.,
Mr Sandip Dasgupta, Adv.
For the State: Mr Abhrotosh Majumder, Government Pleader.
AND
WP 2569 (W) of 2014
SUDIP DAS AND OTHERS
-VERSUS-
WBHIDC LIMITED AND OTHERS
For the Petitioners: Mr Kasinath De, Adv.,
Mr Sandip Kumar De, Adv.
For the WBHIDC Ltd: Mr Jayanta Kr. Mitra, Advocate General,
Mr Jishnu Chowdhury, Adv.,
Mr Debanjan Mandal, Adv.,
Mr Chayan Gupta, Adv.,
Mr Sandip Dasgupta, Adv.
For the State: Mr Abhrotosh Majumder, Government Pleader.
AND
WP 929 (W) of 2014
SANJIB KUMAR CHANDA
-VERSUS-
STATE OF WEST BENGAL AND OTHERS
For the Petitioner: Mr Hiranmoy Bhattacharya, Adv.,
Mr Tarak Nath Halder, Adv.
For the WBHIDC Ltd: Mr Jayanta Kr. Mitra, Advocate General,
Mr Jishnu Chowdhury, Adv.,
Mr Debanjan Mandal, Adv.,
Mr Chayan Gupta, Adv.,
Mr Sandip Dasgupta, Adv.
For the State: Mr Abhrotosh Majumder, Government Pleader,
Mr Subhabrata Datta, Adv.
AND
WP 5655 (W) of 2014
SUMITA MONDAL
-VERSUS-
STATE OF WEST BENGAL AND OTHERS
For the Petitioner: Mr Sanajit Kumar Ghosh, Adv.,
Ms D. Nag, Adv.
For the WBHIDC Ltd: Mr Jayanta Kr. Mitra, Advocate General,
Mr Jishnu Chowdhury, Adv.,
Mr Debanjan Mandal, Adv.,
Mr Chayan Gupta, Adv.,
Mr Sandip Dasgupta, Adv.
For the State: Mr Abhrotosh Majumder, Government Pleader,
Mr Subhabrata Datta, Adv.
AND
WP 25416 (W) of 2012
DEBASIS DEBNATH AND OTHERS
-VERSUS-
WBHIDC LIMITED AND OTHERS
For the Petitioners: Mr Arunava Ghosh, Adv.,
Mr Anindya Lahiri, Adv.,
Mr Mainak Ganguly, Adv.,
Mr Pragyadeepta Ray, Adv.,
Mr Puspal Chakraborty, Adv.
For the WBHIDC Ltd: Mr Jayanta Kr. Mitra, Advocate General,
Mr Jishnu Chowdhury, Adv.,
Mr Debanjan Mandal, Adv.,
Mr Chayan Gupta, Adv.,
Mr Sandip Dasgupta, Adv.
For the State: Mr Abhrotosh Majumder, Government Pleader.
AND
WP 5988 (W) of 2014
NAWSAD ALI
-VERSUS-
WBHIDC LIMITED AND OTHERS
For the Petitioner: Mr Arunava Ghosh, Adv.,
Mr Anindya Lahiri, Adv.,
Mr Mainak Ganguly, Adv.,
Mr Pragyadeepta Ray, Adv.,
Mr Puspal Chakraborty, Adv.
For the WBHIDC Ltd: Mr Jayanta Kr. Mitra, Advocate General,
Mr Jishnu Chowdhury, Adv.,
Mr Debanjan Mandal, Adv.,
Mr Chayan Gupta, Adv.,
Mr Sandip Dasgupta, Adv.
For the State: Mr Abhrotosh Majumder, Government Pleader,
Mr Subhabrata Datta, Adv.
AND
WP 22158 (W) of 2011
SWADHIN KUMAR SADHU
-VERSUS-
WBHIDC LIMITED AND OTHERS
For the Petitioner: Mr Arunava Ghosh, Adv.,
Mr Anindya Lahiri, Adv.,
Mr Mainak Ganguly, Adv.,
Mr Pragyadeepta Ray, Adv.,
Mr Puspal Chakraborty, Adv.
For the WBHIDC Ltd: Mr Jayanta Kr. Mitra, Advocate General,
Mr Jishnu Chowdhury, Adv.,
Mr Debanjan Mandal, Adv.,
Mr Chayan Gupta, Adv.,
Mr Sandip Dasgupta, Adv.
For the State: Mr Abhrotosh Majumder, Government Pleader.
Mr Subhabrata Datta, Adv.
Hearing concluded on: May 11, 2015.
BEFORE
SANJIB BANERJEE, Judge
Date: May 13, 2015.
SANJIB BANERJEE, J. : -
The common strand running through these 61 petitions is that the
allotment of plots made in favour of the petitioners in New Town, Rajarhat have
been, or are threatened to be, cancelled. The petitioners maintain that the actual
or threatened cancellation of the allotments is arbitrary, illegal and vindictive.
They complain of hostile discrimination against them while several others
similarly placed as many of the petitioners have not only been allowed to retain
their allotments, but possession of the parcels of land was expeditiously made
over to such favoured persons.
2. They are two broad groups of petitioners: the allottees of residential plots of
land and the allottees of land for commercial use. Some of the petitioners seek to
make a distinction on the basis of whether they were the beneficiaries of the
discretionary quota reserved unto the erstwhile chairperson of the West Bengal
Housing Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited; or, whether they were
beneficiaries of allotments made directly by the board of directors of WBHIDCO.
3. The State and WBHIDCO (the company or HIDCO) do not appear to have
any conflict of interest and the State has adopted the stand taken by the
company in a supplementary affidavit affirmed on its behalf in WP No. 5158 (W)
of 2013 and in the affidavits-in-opposition filed by the company in the individuals
matters. The said supplementary affidavit has been affirmed by a principal
secretary to the State government who is designated as the chairman-cum-
managing director of the company. The parties to all the petitions were given the
liberty to obtain all pleadings in the relevant and the connected matters on the
usual terms. Most of these petitions were heard analogously even prior to
affidavits being called for and the previous orders on one or the other of most of
these petitions intended and indicated that the other matters would also be
governed by the same.
4. The final hearing was structured thus: WP 2522(W) of 2014 pertaining to
the cancellation of an allotment of land for commercial use was chosen, by
consent of the appearing parties, as the lead petition and the common grounds of
the challenge to the cancellation of the allotments in the several matters were
required to be placed in full detail together with the aspects peculiar to that
matter. The State and the company were thereafter heard in their defence of the
decision to cancel the allotments in these matters. The private respondent No.
16 in the lead matter - the object of ire of many of the rejected allottees - missed
the window allotted to it, but has been heard subsequently. The petitioners in the
lead petition were permitted to submit in their rejoinder. Thereafter, the special
features in every other individual petition were permitted to be addressed on,
both by the petitioners and the respondents.
5. The rejected allottees claim that the cancellation of the allotments in their
favour is irrational, unreasonable and arbitrary. They say that since they had
applied in the usual course pursuant to applications being invited by the
company for allotment of plots of lands in Rajarhat, the mechanism that may
have been followed while assessing their applications is of no relevance upon the
allotments being approved in their favour and the approval being communicated
to them. They suggest that the State cannot act in a whimsical or capricious or
vindictive manner upon the change of guard at the company following the
alteration of ruling regime in the State. The rejected allottees insist that upon the
the approval of the allotments in their favour being informed to them, rights
vested in them; which could not be wished away by a subsequent executive fiat
or on any nebulous or imaginary perception as to the irregularity of the process
by which the allotments were approved or made in their favour.
6. The rejected allottees submit that it is not as if all the allotments approved
or made by the company, whether by the board of the company or under the
chairman's discretionary quota, have been cancelled. They suggest that some of
the allotments made cannot be picked and chosen for cancellation while other
allotments made in similar circumstances have been left undisturbed. They
argue that if the discretionary quota of the chairman of the company were to be
abolished, future allotments on such basis may not be made; but the allotments
already approved or made could not have been annulled and no retrospective
abolition of the discretionary quota of the chairman could have been effected by a
tenuous distinction being made between similar allotments on the basis of the
accidental fact that some of such allotments had culminated in concluded
contracts while others had not. The rejected allottees in whose favour allotments
had been made by the company otherwise than under the discretionary quota of
the chairman complain that the cancellation of their allotments cannot be
permitted as the company had due authority to allot parcels of lands in Rajarhat
and the allotments of plots to them were on the basis of the considered opinion of
the board of directors of the company and not merely on the recommendation of
its chairman.
7. The rejected allottees say that the impugned letters of cancellation of the
allotment of land in their favour are primarily on the basis of the decision to allot
the land being taken by the chairman of the erstwhile board of the company
immediately prior to the model code of conduct coming into force with effect from
March 1, 2011 when the schedule for holding elections to the legislative assembly
of the State was announced by the Election Commission of India on such date.
Several petitioners rely on the notification of March 1, 2011 issued by the
Election Commission to suggest that the model code of conduct that came into
effect on March 1, 2011 could not have stood in the way of applications for
allotment of land being processed or decided or even allotments being made
during the currency of the model code. They also rely on a previous clarification
issued by the Election Commission on January 7, 2007 as to the nature of
activities that would be prohibited once the model code kicked in and that
ongoing programmes which had started before the announcement of the election
would not be affected thereby. The rejected allottees say that it is presumptuous
on the part of the State and the company to perceive that the previous
dispensation in power had purported to rush the allotments, whether or not to
favoured applicants, on the apprehension that there was a change in the air and
such political combination would not be returned to power. The petitioners
question the rationale of the perception of the company that prompted it to
review and cancel the allotments on the ground that nothing tumultuous
happened on or immediately prior to February 28, 2011 for the previous
dispensation to suddenly wake up to the idea that such order would yield to a
new at the hustings. The petitioners contend that if the previous dispensation
was unduly favourably disposed towards the allottees, or owed some undisclosed
obligation to them, the allotments would have been made earlier and not
suddenly on or about February 28, 2011. They suggest that since a meeting of
the board of directors of the company had been convened to be held on February
28, 2011, it is not surprising that several allotments were made on such day. The
petitioners submit that it can neither be said nor has it been demonstrated by
the company in its new-found reformed image that there was any good reason for
not holding the board meeting of the company at any earlier or later date. The
entire endeavour of the petitioners is to suggest that the allotments of land in
their favour have been reviewed and cancelled or threatened to be cancelled with
improper motive by seeking to clothe such decision with a modicum or reasons to
make a distinction between members of the same class who could not have been
treated in a dissimilar manner.
8. The petitioners submit that merely because there has been a change in the
political configuration in power, it cannot follow that an authority answering to
that description under Article 12 of the Constitution would revisit past decisions
on the ground of political ideology or allegiance now being different. The
petitioners say that if no change had been brought about following the assembly
election in 2011, the allotments would have been honoured; as a corollary, they
argue that merely because there is a change in the political bloc in power in the
State - and a possible alteration in perception - decisions affecting citizens and
communication to citizens could not have been undone on the ipse dixit of the
new occupants in the corridors of power. The petitioners insinuate that the
impugned decision to cancel the allotments has more of a political flavour than
any sense of administrative morality or principled governance. They suggest that
the much publicised bitter diatribe exchanged between the erstwhile chairman of
the company and the present highest political functionary in the State may be
the cause for the high-handed action by the company to annul the acts of the
erstwhile chairman and to show such person in poor light.
9. The petitioners complain that the whimsical conduct of the company began
with the adjourned 60th board meeting of the company held on August 19, 2011
whereat the status of the allotment of plots made by the board of directors of the
company at its 59th meeting held on February 28, 2011 and the status of the
allotments made under the chairman's discretionary quota were discussed. The
relevant resolutions passed on August 19, 2011 pertaining to the allotments
made by the board of directors at the meeting of February 28, 2011 and the
allotments made under the chairman's quota on February 28, 2011 are set out:
"10 (i) Status of allotment of plots made by the Board at its 59th
Meeting held on 28th February, 2011
...
"Resolved that, approval be and is hereby accorded to the following;
(a) In cases where after initial intimation/offer of allotment, no application Money/Earnest Money is paid/deposited the offer be cancelled ab-initio;
(b) In cases of residential plots where the Application Money has been deposited, no formal letter be issued. Application Money so deposited be refunded with a letter of regret refunding Application Money.
(c) In case of non-residential plots where allotment letters were issued by the Board on 28-02-2011 but Earnest Money has not been deposited allotment be cancelled with a letter of regret;
(d) For the applicants of residential plots under Chairman's discretionary quota where formal allotment has been issued after receiving application money and the applicants started depositing money or deposited full payment, or yet to start depositing payment of installments, and also for the applicants of non-residential plots under Chairman's discretionary quota and allotment approved in the meeting of the Board of Directors on 28.02.2011 where allotment has been issued and earnest money, and/or other installments have been deposited, an option be given to all such applicants to withdraw the applications upon which all the amounts paid will be refunded within a period of fifteen days from the date of receipt of letters. The application for withdrawal must reach the office within 15 days from the date of receipt of this letter.
"10 (ii) Status of allotments out of Chairman's Quota ...
"Resolved that, approval be and is hereby accorded in view of abolishing of Chairman's Quota system to cancellation of all the plots allotted/approved under Chairman's Quota specifically on 28th February, 2011 i.e. just a day before the declaration of General Election in the State of West Bengal to avoid restriction that would be imposed by Model Code of Conduct."
10. The petitioners say that though one of the resolutions at the board meeting of the company held on August 19, 2011 gives the impression that the chairman's discretionary quota for allotment of plots in New Town had been abolished, there is no specific decision of the company reflected in the minutes of such board meeting that records the discontinuation of allotments under such discretionary quota. The petitioners contend that one of the resolutions adopted at the board meeting of the company on October 22, 2011 refers to "the wishes of the State Govt." but there is no reflection in the said minutes or elsewhere as to what exactly was the wish of the State government and how the same had been communicated to the company. The petitioners suggest that if the State and the company now perceive the company under the previous minister-chairman having been a veritable one-person organisation given to arbitrary decision- making and whimsical allotments of land, the arbitrariness surrounding the recent functioning of the company as reflected from its board minutes, its decisions and the impugned letters of cancellation of allotments would require the company in its present avatar to be painted in the same brush. They suggest that if the company was a puppet under the previous regime with its strings controlled exclusively by its minister-chairman, the company's present genuflection to the wishes of the State government betrays the same operational stratagem.
11. The petitioners mock the independent status of the company under the present management by referring to a board note of August 12, 2011 pertaining to the allotments approved on February 28, 2011 and the note-sheet appended thereto which carries signatures up to September 9, 2011. The relevant note reflects a write-up on the matter pertaining to the allotment of plots in New Town, Rajarhat made on February 28, 2011, both under the chairman's discretionary quota and as otherwise resolved by the board of the company; and, of such subject being discussed with the then Advocate-General between August 16 and August 18, 2011. The note carries a suggested resolution of the board meeting of the company and the petitioners show that the resolution passed by the board on August 19, 2011 was on the lines as advised by Advocate-General; though the more refined suggested resolution, particularly as to the abolition of the chairman's quota, appears in a less articulate manner in the minutes. The petitioners endeavour to demonstrate that if it is the spirit in the bottle that the new regime was seeking to complain or get rid of, it would be evident that it remains the same though it is packaged in a new bottle bearing another hue.
12. The petitioners refer to the minutes of the 61st meeting of the board of directors of the company held on October 22, 2010 whereat the business pertaining to allotment of plots in New Town was discussed under item No. 28 as follows:
"28. Allotment of land/plots issued on 28.02.2011 but were approved prior to 28.02.2011 for non-residential/residential/proposed Cooperative Housing Societies etc. purposes.
A Board Note was placed before the Meeting detailing allotments made to different persons, Companies, Housing Cooperatives & Organisations for the purpose of Residential/Non- Residential/Cooperative Housing Societies and that formal allotment letters although issued on 28-02-2011 approvals were accorded by Chairman prior to 28-02-2011. In the Board Note allotments are shown under four Categories numbering about 99 in total. After a brief discussion, the following resolution was passed:-
"Resolved that, keeping in view of the wishes of the State Govt. and more particularly in view of allotments issued just before implementation of the Code of Conduct before Assembly Election in the State of West Bengal approval be and is hereby accorded for cancellation of all such plots as detailed in the Board Note and its annexures and that AGM(M) be and is hereby authorized to issue such letters of cancellation.
"It was also resolved in this connection that CMD be and is hereby authorized to do all such other acts and things as he may deem most appropriate in the given circumstances."
13. Since the relevant discussion and the resolution referred to a "Board Note", the company was required to produce the same. Such note (which has been circulated at the initial stage of the hearing to all the petitioners who have opted to receive the same) relating to item No. 28 on the agenda is captioned "Allotment of land/ plots issued on 28.02.2011 but approved prior to 28.02.2011 for Non- residential/ Residential / formation of Co-operative Housing Societies purposes." The summary of the allotments in such note reflects four broad categories: non- residential, cooperative housing societies, large cooperative societies and individual residential plots. The relevant table, which covers 99 allotments, is set out:
Sl. Category of No. of Date of Date of Remarks
No. allotment such approval issue of
allottees allotment
1 Non- 1 01.02.2011 28.02.2011
Residential
1(a) - Do - 7 24.02.2011 28.02.2011
2(a) Formation of 1 21.02.2011 28.02.2011
Co-operative
Housing
Society
2(b) - Do - 19 22.02.2011 28.02.2011
2(c) Housing Co- 3 24.02.2011 28.02.2011
operative
Societies
2(d) Housing Co- 2 25.02.2011 28.02.2011
operative
Societies
2(e) Housing Co- 7 26.02.2011 28.02.2011
operative
Societies
3 Large Co- 1 03.02.2011 28.02.2011
operative
Societies
3(a) - Do - 2 22.02.2011 28.02.2011
3(b) - Do - 1 25.02.2011 28.02.2011
4 Residential - 1 13.01.2011 28.02.2011
Individual
4(a) - Do - 1 31.01.2011 28.02.2011
4(b) - Do - 1 09.02.2011 28.02.2011
4(c) - Do - 1 18.02.2011 28.02.2011
4(d) - Do - 11 22.02.2011 28.02.2011
4(e) - Do - 3 24.02.2011 28.02.2011
4(f) - Do - 11 25.02.2011 28.02.2011
4(g) - Do - 26 26.02.2011 28.02.2011
14. There are five charts which are appended to the note pertaining to item No. 28 of the agenda relating to the board meeting of the company convened on October 22, 2011. Though the table in the relevant note refers to eight non- residential allotment of plots, the first of the charts covers 17 non-residential allotments where the allotment letters were issued on February 28, 2011 but the approval was accorded prior thereto. The second chart pertains to HIG-C (5.98 cottah plot) cooperative societies, where the date of approval in all 14 cases is shown as either February 22, 2011 or February 26, 2011 (two of the dates have been mistakenly mentioned as February 22, 2012 and February 22, 2013) and the offer letters were all issued on February 28, 2011. The third list pertains to category MIG-C (5.01 cottah plot) cooperative societies covering 13 in number where the approval is shown to have been accorded between February 21, 2011 and February 26, 2011 and the offer letters were issued on February 28, 2011. The fourth chart covers two groups: five cooperative societies in category LIG-C (4.03 cottah plot), where the approval in each case was accorded between February 22, 2011 and February 26, 2011 and the offer letters were issued on February 28, 2011; and, four large cooperative societies allotted plots in excess of 11.96 cottah where the approval in each case was given between February 03, 2011 and February 25, 2011 and the offer letters were issued on February 28, 2011. The fifth chart pertains to individual residential allotments covering HIG-I (2.99 cottah plot), HIG-II (4.485 cottah plot) and MIG-I (2.24 cottah plot). The approval in respect of the 20 HIG-I allotments was accorded between January 13, 2011 and February 26, 2011 (there are three obvious mistakes in the dates of approval being indicated as February 25, 2012, February 25, 2013 and February 22, 2012) where the offer letters were all issued on February 28, 2011 (in one case there is an obvious mistake in the date being indicated as June 28, 2011). The approval of the six HIG-II plots that are covered in the fourth chart were granted between February 9, 2011 and February 26, 2011 and the offer letters issued on February 28, 2011. The 39 MIG-I allotments in the last chart reveal the approval being accorded between February 22, 2011 and February 26, 2011, with the offer letters in every case being dated February 28, 2011.
15. The petitioners point out the discrepancy between the table under the relevant note which covers 99 allotments and the charts which cover 108 allotments (17 in the non-residential category, 14 in HIG-C cooperative societies, 13 in MIG-C cooperative societies, five in LIG-C cooperative societies, four in large cooperative societies, 20 in HIG-I individual residential allotments, six in HIG-II residential allotments and 29 in MIG-I residential allotments).
16. The petitioners ascribe improper motive to the company and assert that the decision-making process culminating in the cancellation of some of the allotments by the company is so flawed that no seriousness can be attached thereto. They refer to the discussion under item No. 28 in the agenda covering 99 allotments as shown in the board note and the resolution that followed cancelling all the allotments covered by the note. The petitioners say that the decision as reflected in the relevant resolution betrays complete non-application of mind in the directors failing to recognise that the table that summarised the allotments in the board note did not tally with charts appended thereto. They ask as to whether all the allotments as covered by the charts stood cancelled pursuant to the relevant board resolution of October 22, 2011 or it was left to the whims of the officials of the company to select such 99 of those as they wished for cancellation.
17. The petitioners say that though the board resolutions were adopted by the company for reviewing or cancelling the allotments in August and October, 2011, which was shortly after the change of guard at the Writers' Buildings and the reconstitution of the board of directors of the company, no immediate follow-up action was taken in pursuance thereof. They suggest that the period of about a year or more after the decision to cancel the allotments was taken at the 61st board meeting on October 22, 2011 may have been availed of to pick and choose which allotments to cancel, which to regularise and which to turn a Nelson's eye to.
18. The arbitrariness and whimsical approach of the State and the company, according to the petitioners, is reflected in the shifting stands as evident from the resolutions passed at the 60th, 61st and 70th board meetings of the Company held on August 19, 2011 October 22, 2011 and December 1, 2012, respectively.
19. Since the basis of the company's present angst against the exercise of the discretion by the erstwhile minister-chairman is that the allotments did not serve any public purpose and may have caused substantial loss to the State exchequer, the petitioners refer to the minutes of the 62nd meeting of the board of directors of the company held on December 28, 2011 whereat the price of land in Rajarhat was fixed by the present board. The minutes of such meeting reflect that Rs.2.75 lakh per cottah was found to be the break-even price. It is also for another purpose that the rejected allottees refer to the discussion at the 62nd board meeting preceding the relevant resolution under item No. 8 of the business transacted at such meeting. The petitioners complain that the general policy indicated in the relevant discussion leaves latitude for subversion in the use of the expression "with some exceptions." The petitioners make out that it is not as if the present board of directors of the company or the present dispensation in power really seeks to address any issue on the basis of any principles or a sense of propriety. They insinuate that since the allotments had been made under the previous administration, there may be a perception that the present dispensation has been deprived of the benefits that may have been obtained in making the allotments under the erstwhile chairman's quota. Some of the petitioners rush to demonstrate that a form of a discretionary quota has been introduced by the present board of directors and the present dispensation in power by a backdoor method by using the expression "with some exceptions like cabinet decisions"
after having apparently abolished the chairman's discretionary quota with much fanfare.
20. At the 70th meeting of the board of directors of the company, matters pertaining to cancellation of certain allotments, earmarking particular areas in New Town for specific purposes and like business was transacted. The minutes pertaining to such meeting reflect two items of business relevant for the present purpose:
"15. Waiver of DPC in respect of allotments made under Chairman's Quota kept under review Chairman informed that for many residential/non-residential plots allotted under the then Chairman's Quota during 2010-2011 were put under review and on completion of such review it was decided to hand over of possession to the concerned allottees after receiving full land price. But in most of the cases due payments of land price have not been made by the allottees and in fact receipt of land price was kept pending during a long period of time i.e. from June, 2011 to September, 2011 and for the purpose no formal Order/Public Notification was issued and thereafter through internal file orders, payments were regulated in such appropriate cases.
Subsequently, all land price payments were stopped on 20-12-2011.
It is proposed to waive DPC payable by these allottees and for the purpose a Notice be issued to them to make balance payment within 60 days from the date of issue of the Notice failing which land price payment with DPC at the prescribed rate be made within next 60 days and that if no payment is received within that period the plots may be considered for cancellation.
Accordingly, after a brief discussion, the following Resolution was passed:-
"Resolved that, approval be and is hereby accorded to waiver of DPC in regard to allotments made under the then Chairman's Quota which were put under review as detailed in the Board Note and as mentioned above and that a Notice be issued to all such allottees to make payment of the balance amount within 60 days from the date of issue of such Notice failing which DPC will be charged at the prescribed rate for making land price payment within next 60 days beyond which the plots be considered for Cancellation.
It was also resolved that CMD be and is hereby authorized to do all such other acts and things as he may deem most appropriate in this connection."
"16. Allotment of plots of land in New Town made on 28th February, 2011 Chairman informed that Board at its 60th Meeting held on 19th August, 2011 and 61st Meeting held on 22nd October, 2011 had resolved with prior written Opinion of the Advocate General of West Bengal to cancel all residential plots allotted on 28-02-2011 whether under the then Chairman's Quotas or by the Board of Directors as a hasty policy decision in view of just one day before introduction of Model Code of Conduct for General Election of West Bengal Assembly in 2011 and accordingly where no payments were made plots were cancelled and where some payments were made, the allottees were requested to withdraw and till withdrawal those cases were kept under review. Although, as per Policy decision of the Board these plots may be cancelled outrightly.
Due to such pendency for a long period a few allottees have moved Hon'ble High Court at Kolkata and HIDCO finding it difficult to explain such delay for nearly 1 ½ years on account of review and decision during preparation of Affidavits.
The matter was referred to M/s. Fox & Mondal, Retainer Advocates and Solicitors of HIDCO, who opined that the issue should no longer be kept pending for review and that all allotments whether residential or non-residential, whether Chairman's Quota or by the Board allotted on 28-02-2011 for which initial letters of intimation were issued on 28-02-2011 and thereafter, pending for review be withdrawn/cancelled by the Board in principle immediately ignoring payment position.
Board noted that the policy adopted at the 60th & 61st Meetings are quite transparent and the objective was to avoid any allegation/discrimination and/or allotments made arbitrarily/hastily.
Accordingly, the following resolution was passed:-
"Resolved that, further to policy decision adopted by the Board in its 60th & 61st Meeting in respect of all types of allotments made on or after 28-02-2011, approval be and is hereby accorded to cancellation of all these allotments, both residential and non-residential, without keeping the same pending any longer, for which approval was given on 28-02-2011 by the then Chairman of the Board without discrimination, for the sake of clarity and transparency.
It was also resolved that CMD be and is hereby authorized to do all such other acts and things as he may deem most appropriate in this connection."
21. The petitioners criticise the business transacted in respect of the waiver of late payment charges by referring to the recording in the minutes that possession of plots had been made over to certain allottees under the erstwhile chairman's quota. They question the rationale of waiving delayed payment charges and the back-handed procedure adopted for regularisation of the some of the allotments made under the erstwhile chairman's discretionary quota despite the previous decisions of the board. The rejected allottees submit that the cancellation of their allotments cannot be upheld in the light of the minutes of the 70th board meeting reflecting the abject favouritism shown to certain unnamed allottees under the same chairman's discretionary quota by virtue of which these petitioners also obtained their allotments.
22. The petitioners say that the flip-flop stands adopted by the company at its three key board meetings held on August 19, 2011, October 22, 2011 and December 1, 2012 are reflected in the relevant minutes. They suggest that if it is the resolution adopted at the board meeting of the company held on December 1, 2012 which has to be regarded as the raison d'etre for the letters of cancellation being issued to the allottees, it is evident that only the allotments "made on or after 28-02-2011 ... both residential and non-residential ... for which approval was given on 28-02-2011 by the then Chairman of the Board without discrimination" ought to be cancelled. The petitioners assert that the stand taken by the company, and endorsed by the State, at paragraph 20 of the supplementary affidavit filed by the company is not supported by any board decision of the company. Paragraph 20 of such supplementary affidavit states that allotments of the following allottees, other than those specifically referred to at paragraphs 15 and 17 thereof, had been cancelled by the company:
"a) In case of residential plots, where letters of intimation were issued on 28th February, 2011.
b) In case of non-residential plots, where firm offers of allotment were issued after 28th February, 2011."
23. Since the business transacted at the several meetings of the board of directors of the company has been noticed, some of the decisions taken at the 80th meeting of the board of directors of the company held on April 10, 2014 may also be seen. The minutes of such meeting have been disclosed in the company's supplementary affidavit and are of some relevance since hearing in at least two of the matters had commenced by then before it was discovered that affidavits had not been completed in several matters.
24. At the meeting of April 10, 2014, a decision was taken on the allotment policy and pricing policy. The break-even price for land in New Town in 2014-15 was assessed to be Rs.4.94 lakh per cottah and it was decided that allotments for commercial use of land would be on leasehold basis for 99 years instead of on freehold basis as had been followed earlier. Apart from the several other resolutions adopted at such 80th board meeting of the company to invite expressions of interest for land being allotted for particular purposes, the board took up the two cases that had stuck out as sore thumbs in the matter of cancellation of plots allotted under the chairman's discretionary quota: to Balaji Enterprise and Alo Eye Care. When some of these petitions had been initially heard about a year back, the petitioners referred constantly to the curious cases of Balaji and Alo and the alacrity with which the company moved to ensure that the deeds of conveyance in favour of such parties were executed within a short time and possession of the land handed over before the company embarked on the exercise of cancelling some of the allotments made under the chairman's discretionary quota or the board of the company during the previous regime.
25. At the 80th board meeting of the company the last item of business pertained to the allotments in favour of Balaji and Alo. The minutes record that the deed of conveyance was registered in favour of Balaji on October 21, 2011 and possession of the 20-cottah plot made over on November 11, 2011. The corresponding deed relating to the 8-cottah plot allotted to Alo was registered to November 2, 2011 and possession thereof made over on July 16, 2012.
26. Some of the petitioners in the later matters make light of the State's submission that documentation, registration and handing over possession of plots are done at the lower echelons of the company and, as such, had been completed in the two cases before notices cancelling the perverse allotments made under the previous regime were issued. The petitioners insist that it is inconceivable that a momentous decision as that of cancellation of a category of allotments would be taken by the board of the directors of the company but the company would not be the vigilant to ensure that such decision was uniformly implemented. Almost every petitioner, without exception, has submitted that the curious cases of Balaji and Alo involve more than what meets the eye.
27. The petitioners assert that it is one thing to say that there was a possibility of or actual abuse of the discretionary quota of the chairman of the company to allot plots in New Town and, as a consequence, it was necessary to cancel all of them; but quite another to suggest that only some of the beneficiaries of such improper allotments may be proceeded against and the others ignored. They point out that the State cannot arbitrarily select a few beneficiaries under a scheme which is perceived to be illegal while not taking steps against others similarly situated and thereby regularising the other improper allotments or anointing them as valid and justified. The petitioners in the lead matter have impleaded several private parities as respondents, including a commercial entity and several police personnel and officers of the State in their individual capacities. These petitioners reason that if the process of allotting plots in New Town under the chairman's discretionary quota or by the board is found to be illegal or improper, the consequence has to be borne by one and all or none at all. They criticise the selective decision of annulment of some of the allotments and say that the pointed action against certain entities is tainted with the same arbitrariness on which the company founds its decision to perceive the allotments made under the chairman's discretionary quota or the special quota of the board of directors of the company to be unreasonable or irregular.
28. It is necessary at this stage to notice some of the orders passed on these petitions in general, though the orders may have been recorded in some particular matters. After affidavits were filed in two of the matters, WP No. 37304(W) of 2013 and WP No. 5158 (W) of 2013, it was felt that the relevant documents pertaining to the minutes of certain board meetings of the company and the full list of allottees of land under the chairman's discretionary quota in all categories ought to be before court. Accordingly, on April 3, 2014 an order was passed on such two petitions for the managing director of the company to disclose the full list of allottees of land under the chairman's discretionary quota and the minutes of the 59th board meeting of the company by way of an affidavit. The order also called for an unequivocal statement to be made in the affidavit "as to whether all allottees who had been issued allotment letters on February 28, 2011 have been treated similarly or whether there is even a single instance of a similarly-placed allottee being treated in a dissimilar manner." The company was also required to indicate the mode of allotments of all plots in New Town, "whether residential or non-residential and whether done through lottery or auction or under the chairman's discretionary quota or otherwise."
29. At that stage, WP No. 37304(W) of 2013 had been taken up first since such matter appeared ahead of the connected matters in the cause-list. However, it was noticed, inter alia, by the order dated May 6, 2014 that affidavits had not been filed in several of the other matters and it took the parties, primarily the respondent authorities, till after February, 2015 to complete the affidavits in all the matters. On February 5, 2015 an order was made on WP No. 37304(W) of 2013 recording that affidavits had not been completed in some of the matters and adjourning the hearing till February 23, 2015 to enable the completion of the pleadings. On the same day, an order was made on WP No. 2522 of 2014 which later came to be regarded as the lead petition, requiring the State to ensure that notices were issued to other similarly placed persons as the petitioners whose allotments had not been cancelled, so that they could participate in the present proceedings. Notices were also required to be published in newspapers in three languages informing all allottees of land at Rajarhat under the chairman's discretionary quota of the pendency of the present proceedings.
30. On February 23, 2015 it was discovered that affidavits in at least six of the matters had not been filed by the company, whereupon the hearing was adjourned to March 10, 2015. On March 10, 2015 hearing commenced and the order passed on the lead matter on such day recorded the State's submission that the State endorsed the stand taken by the company in its affidavits and that the State had no conflict of interest with the company. The State also confirmed that it would not seek to file any independent affidavit as HIDCO had already filed its affidavits-in-opposition and a supplementary affidavit in WP 5158(W) of 2013. On March 18, 2015 it was recorded that by consent of the appearing parties, WP No. 2522(W) of 2014 had been chosen as the lead matter in the clutch of 61 petitions pertaining to the cancellation of allotments of land in Rajarhat. In course of the final hearing, two of the petitions challenging the cancellation of allotments, WP No. 3788(W) of 2014 and WP 18529(W) of 2013, were dismissed as not pressed.
31. Before reverting to the argument of hostile discrimination levelled by the rejected allottees against the respondent authorities, it is necessary to see the genesis of the company, its decision to introduce the discretionary quota for its chairman to allot plots in New Town and what the company has culled out from its records in its affidavits and the supplementary affidavit filed by its managing director in WP No. 5158(W) of 2013 pursuant to the order dated April 3, 2014.
32. The present chief executive of the company is designated as its chairman- cum-managing director and is a principal secretary to the State in the Urban Development Department. According to the supplementary affidavit, the company is a government company under Section 617 of the Companies Act, 1956, having been incorporated on April 26, 1999. The State holds 90.65% of the paid-up capital in the company; 7.22 % is held by the West Bengal Housing Board; and, 2.13 % thereof is held by the West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation Ltd. Both the Housing Board and WBIDC are undertakings of the State.
33. The principal objects of the company, as evident from its memorandum of association, are to develop housing projects and related infrastructure in urban and rural areas in the State "and for that purpose to acquire and purchase, take on lease, tenancy or in exchange, hire or by other means ... any property, land or any building ... develop the same ... equip the same or any part thereof with all or any amenities, infrastructure or conveniences ... and to deal with the same in any manner whatsoever ... and to let or dispose of the same ... by outright sale or by lease or on rental whether by private treaty or by auction or in any other mode or disposition all or any integral part thereof to cater to the needs of people belonging to different income groups." The third object in the company's memorandum speaks of the company promoting "the formation of industrial estates, commercial or residential, townships, colonies, cooperatives, housing and/or industrial societies, companies, trusts or other association or organisation for owing any of the properties movable or immovable."
34. There is nothing else of any great significance in the memorandum or articles of association of the company except Article 77 of the articles that entitles the State Government "to nominate directors on the Board of the Company including the Chairman, Vice-Chairman and the Managing Director."
35. According to its present chairman's supplementary affidavit, the company was constituted with the object of developing New Town, which was initially designed on 3075 hectare of land situated within 20 km of the central business district of Kolkata and a few kilometres off the airport. The chairman of the company narrates that with the idea of setting up New Town, the Housing Department of the State decided to acquire land for the purpose of development of the new township. The supplementary affidavit informs that it was initially decided that the funds for acquisition of the land would be provided by the Housing Board; but, after the incorporation of the company, it was the company which provided funds for such acquisition. The land was made available to the company in a phased manner beginning the year 2000 and a notification of November 26, 2001 issued by the Department of Housing provided, inter alia, as follows:
"2) The land shall be used by the WB HIDCO for the purpose of development of New Town, Kolkata which means and includes amongst other things allotment of plots to the Individuals / Co-
Operatives / West Bengal Housing Board / Joint Venture Companies / Others Entrepreneurs etc. for residential / business / commercial / other purposes, as well as overall infrastructural development relating thereto. In doing so the WB HIDCO shall have the right to sell, lease, rent and dispose of those lands freely and without any restriction subject to the condition that the said disposal will be in accordance with and in pursuance of the stated development objectives of the New Town, Kolkata as laid out in the approved Master Land Use Plan (MLUP) / Land Use Development Control Plan (LUDCP) & other plans prepared under the relevant statutes."
"5) The WB HIDCO being the Planning authority, shall have every right over future planning over the lands under the notification consistent with the Rules and Regulations of West Bengal Town and County (Planning and Development) Act, 1979."
36. As per the supplementary affidavit of the company, the board of directors of the company met for the first time on May 21, 1999 whereat a chairman was appointed. At the fourth meeting of the board of directors of the company held on February 2, 2000 under the chairmanship of Shri Gautam Deb, the then Minister-in-Charge, Housing and Public Health Engineering, the business transacted in respect of "Disposal and Allotment policy of land" appears almost as a footnote to the minutes. It is easy to miss the profundity of the following short sentence as the real purport thereof is reflected in a note appended to the minutes:
"The Board considered the proposal as detailed in item 20 of the Agenda Note and accorded its approval to the proposals as put forward therein."
37. The relevant "Agenda Note" is quoted in the body of the supplementary affidavit and appears at page 114 thereof as follows:
"1) Quota / Reservation of Plots :
Following reservation / quota may be adopted for particular categories of persons in respect of allotment of residential plots in New Town, Calcutta.
Categories of reservation
1) Ex-Serviceman/War Widow/ 2%
Serving personnel/physically
handicapped.
2) Project affected persons 3%
(Who have not availed of any other
Rehabilitation benefit of HIDCO.)
3) Chairman's quota 5%
Total reservation 10%
Notes:
i) Plot eligibility rules as noted hereafter will apply.
ii) One applicant/family can apply for one plot only.
iii) In case there are not enough applicants for the reserved quota, the plots remaining unallotted will be allotted to the general applicants.
iv) Except for Chairman's quota all plots will be allotted by draw of lots in the presence of applicants."
38. The petitioners refer to an order issued by the Housing Department of the State on October 13, 2003 by which a committee was constituted with the principal secretary in the Tourism Department as the chairperson "to examine the applications for allotment of land in New Town against the discretionary quota of the Chairman, W.B.HIDCO and to make necessary recommendations to him for a final decision." The committee also comprised the managing director of the company, the principal advisor to the chairman of the company, the general manager (administration) of the company and the officer on special duty to the chairman of the company. The petitioners place the minutes of the 37th meeting of the board of directors of the company held on December 29, 2006 whereat item No. 17 records as follows:
"17. Reservation of Chairman's Quota (5%) of total Bulk Plots including Institutional, Commercial, Industrial and Residential Plots.
Managing Director informed that WB HIDCO LTD. has established itself as a socially conscious Company committed to the Society particularly for economically weaker sections of people of the State. So far small residential plots including LIG, MIG, HIG of both individuals and co-operative categories were allotted to the public on lottery basis subject to reservation of Chairman's quota at 5% which were allotted on the basis of genuine needs including unsuccessful persons and also for other very justified reasons. Most of the bulk plots allotted so far represent allotment to Joint Venture Companies of WBHB, various Central/State Govt. Departments and some others through tendering process. It was felt a bare necessity for reservation of 5% of the total land available for sale/allotment as Chairman's quota including bulk plots.
After a brief discussion, the following resolution was passed:-
"Resolved that approval be and is hereby given for reservation of 5% of total saleable/allotable land in New Town (all inclusive - small plots and bulk plots) as was done in earlier cases as 'Chairman's Quota' to be used exclusively for land losers. State-based philanthropic and Social Organisations and for encouraging different organizations, bodies, co-operatives/individuals in the State having potential capacity/technical expertise/proven technology etc. but may not be so sound financially to compete in the tendering process (country-wise) and further which if implemented/encouraged will be of great help to the entire society of the State and employment generation amongst people of economically weaker section at such prices as Chairman of the Company may finalise.
It was also Resolved that, Managing Director be and is hereby authorized to do all such other acts and things as he may deem fit and appropriate in this connection."
39. On or about October 12, 2007 notices were released by the company in the Ganashakti Bengali newspaper, which is the self-styled mouthpiece or organ of a political party, and another little-known and much less read English newspaper, The Echo of India, inviting applications for allotment of non-residential plots in New Town under the chairman's discretionary quota. The applications were invited on plain paper and the last date for submission thereof was indicated to be December 31, 2007. The notice referred to the applications being required to conform to certain guidelines and informed the would-be applicants that the guidelines could be inspected at the enquiry counter of the company's office at the Salt Lake Stadium Complex or downloaded from the company's website. A further notice was published on or about February 27, 2008, extending the last date of submission of applications for allotment of commercial plots under the chairman's discretionary quota to March 31, 2008.
40. The committee which was constituted by the Housing Department of the State on October 13, 2003 apparently considered the applications received for allotment of plots for commercial use under the chairman's discretionary quota. The cryptic minutes of the meeting of such screening committee held on April 28, 2008 reveal the following decision:
"The committee constituted vide Housing Department, Government of West Bengal under Order No. 574-HG/H1/NTP/IM-4/2000 Dated, Kolkata the 13th October, 2003 examined the applications for allotment and recommended as eligible the same as per enclosed list bearing Sl. No. 1 to 849 except the application mentioned below:
"Sl. 14,188,272,300,302,303,317,318,323,331,335,388,447, 736, 825→ The quantum of land required not mentioned. Sl. 270,360,361,362,363 → The purpose for which the land required not mentioned."
41. To maintain the chronology relevant for the present purpose, it would suffice to cut to February 28, 2011 for the next two frames in the saga. The 59th board meeting of the company was held at 12 noon on February 28, 2011 under the chairmanship of the minister with 13 other directors of the company and several other officials as invitees along with the company secretary. The allotments of land for diverse purposes, including in favour of several private parties, were deliberated upon and decisions taken. A committee was constituted, comprising a director and the managing director of the company and the additional secretary to the Health Department for considering the eight proposals of private parties for allotment of land for setting up medical facilities in New Town. Though the board meeting was held in the afternoon of February 28, 2011, the business transacted under item No. 8 in the minutes reflects that the "Committee met on 28th February itself in the evening ..." The minutes of the meeting of the relevant committee have also been disclosed in the supplementary affidavit and it is evident that such committee met at 6 pm. It is inconceivable that the meeting of the relevant committee was held at 6 pm on February 28, 2011 but the decision of such committee could be taken note of at the board meeting of the company which began at 12 noon on the same day.
42. Apart from the charge of hostile discrimination levelled by the rejected allottees on the company, they reserve their severest criticism for the manner in which the company went about cancelling the allotments. The rejected allottees say that the notices of cancellation almost read the same in the three dozen or so cancelled non-residential allotments before court and, apart from tweaking a line here or altering a sentence there, the reasons proffered for cancelling the non- residential allotments are vague, unsubstantiated and based on conjecture. The petitioners submit that since both the State and the company are continuing bodies, merely because there is a change of government it would not follow that past, concluded transactions would be reopened or revisited or reviewed. At any rate, the petitioners assert, the company ought to have invited the rejected allottees to satisfy the company if it harboured any doubts as to the veracity of their applications. The rejected allottees refer to the notices of cancellation of their allotments and the allegations of impropriety levelled against them to suggest that no reasonable person - far less a State or a government company - could have taken the decision reflected therein or attributed motives or duplicity to the allottees without affording them an opportunity of representing their version or a hearing. Some of the petitioners have taken serious exception to the use of the word "complicity" in the letters of cancellation. They say that apart from the enunciation of a series of unsubstantiated grounds for cancelling allotments, the accusation as to impropriety on the part of the allottees was uncalled for. The petitioners say that the near-identical letters of cancellation demonstrate the complete non-application of mind to the matters in issue and a predisposed mental make-up in going through with an arbitrary decision on stereotyped reasons that bear no resemblance to the facts or the records.
43. The letter of cancellation issued by the company to the allottees in the lead petition is set out:
"1. The General Election of West Bengal Legislative Assembly was declared on 1st March, 2011 and Model Code of Conduct came into operation on 1st March, 2011 and remained operative till the process of election was over. During the operative period of the Model Code of Conduct, no allotment of land could have been made by WBHIDCO (a wholly owned State Government Undertaking) through Chairman's discretionary quota lawfully and even if done, such allotment would be illegal void and in public interest, should be cancelled.
2. It appears from our records that by our letter No. 1683. seemingly bearing the date of 02.05.2011, an offer of allotment of a plot of land measuring 10 (ten) cottahs being Plot. IID-2951/1 in Action Area- II in New Town, Kolkata, was made to you under the then Chairman's discretionary quota for the purport of setting up a 'Multi-Car Showroom and Servicing'.
3. The offer, as aforesaid, could not have been made from the Chairman's discretionary quota of this State Government Undertaking during the period when the Model Code of Conduct was in operation. Allotment of land is distribution of largesse. The model code of conduct is respected and adhered to by the Government and Government Undertakings. Allotment of public lands inter alia from the Chairman's discretionary quota in February, 2011 and thereafter during the operation of the Model Code of Conduct has led to enquiry in the matter by the Board of Directors of the Company. For the sake of clarity it is noted that the approval of the then Chairman for the said offer of allotment was purportedly made on 28th February, 2011.
4. On examination of the records, it is revealed that there was also no application by you with supporting documents in accordance with the guidelines of allotment of non-residential plots under Chairman's discretionary quota, made within the time prescribed for the same or at all. You were not eligible for such allotment in the absence of requisite documents in that regard. As a matter of fact, documents in support of your claim of eligibility were for the first time submitted to WBHIDCO long after expiry of last date fixed for making applications and your application was not entertainable. It is quite evident that there have been much irregularities and seemingly unauthorized activities in the mater of allotment of the aforesaid plot of land in which your complicity is also apparent.
5. The Board of Directors of the Company has resolved that the letter of offer of allotment was beyond authority and illegal.
6. In any event, the terms of the offer letter dated 02.05.11 were not adhered to by you.
7. The discretion of the Chairman was not exercised reasonably or in a bonafide manner in the interest of WBHIDCO. The purpose of use for the purported allotment is vague and apparently for your wrongful gain only.
8. The examination of your application reveals intrinsic infirmities and inconsistencies and also smacks of malafide, arbitrariness and is prejudicial to the interest of WBWBHIDCO and of the State.
9. Possession of the land was not given to you. The land remains under the exclusive ownership and possession of WBHIDCO. No right whatsoever has accrued in your favour. There has been no concluded transaction or any transfers of land in your favour and you have acquired no right in respect of the land. The offer of allotment was made under gross mistake. The Board of Directors of the Company has since resolved that such offer of allotment made beyond authority and illegally be cancelled.
10. Without prejudice that offer of allotment claimed by you is void and illegal, we place on record that the offer of allotment as claimed by you has been cancelled.
11. Accordingly an amount of Rs.33,41,000/- (Rupees thirty three lakhs forty one thousand.) only deposited by you is being refunded herewith vide cheque no.004031 dt 27.11.13 drawn on Andhra Bank, Salt Lake City, Kolkata - 700098, receipt of which may kindly be acknowledged.
12. This is in public interest."
44. The primary reason indicated in the similar letters in the other cases is identical. Some of the sentences in the subsequent paragraphs have been altered in the other letters of cancellation but the relevant letter issued to the allottees in the lead matter is substantially similar to those served on the others in course of cancelling the allotment of non-residential plots.
45. The petitioners say that since the cancellation of the allotments made in their favour has to stand or fall on the basis of the letters of cancellation, the reasons indicated in the letters of cancellation do not constitute worthy grounds for depriving the petitioners of the right that had vested in them upon allotments being made in their favour by an undertaking of the State.
46. The petitioners submit that to the extent the letters of cancellation of allotments are in excess of, or at variance with, the final decision taken by the board of directors of the company at the meeting of December 1, 2012, the cancellation has to be ignored and set aside. They say that the board's final decision regarding cancellation of the allotments is reflected in the resolution adopted under the 16th item of business at such meeting; and the same covers all types of allotments made on or after February 28, 2011 for which approval was given on February 28, 2011. In the light of such resolution, the petitioners contend that the approval accorded to allotments prior to February 28, 2011 would not be covered thereby and almost all the petitions should succeed on such score alone.
47. Article 14 of the Constitution has been invoked by the petitioners to suggest that even though such provision cannot be seen to advocate a sense of negative equality, the treatment of similarly placed persons in a dissimilar manner is anathema to the underlying principle embodied therein. Most of the petitioners, including those in the lead matter, assert that if they are not permitted to retain their allotments on the ground that others similarly situated had been allowed to enjoy their allotments, the least that can be done to ensure the application of the principle of equality in Article 14 of the Constitution is to cancel the allotments made in favour of such others.
48. The State and the company raise serious questions as to the propriety of the decision of the screening committee pertaining to the non-residential applications and the abject non-application of mind evident from the minutes of the meeting of such committee held on April 28, 2008. They suggest that from the very mooting of the chairman's discretionary quota to the manner of inviting applications thereunder to the perfunctory assessment of the applications by this screening committee and the indiscriminate approval accorded by the then chairman, the entire exercise reeks of arbitrariness, irrationality and crass perversity. The State and the company submit that whether or not this State has any industry or this State lacks employment opportunities, the allotment of government land for commercial use could not have been made pursuant to an advertisement issued in a newspaper run by the principal political party in power and another which may have had no meaningful readership at all. The State exhorts that if the intention was to issue plots in New Town for commercial use to encourage business enterprises or rejuvenate the local economy, the company ought to have advertised more openly and in a more legitimate manner to attract such players who could have made a difference and helped kick-start the floundering economy in this State. The State laments that the manner in which the company went about inviting applications and doling out allotments for commercial purpose smacks of nepotism and like unsavoury practice. The respondent authorities insinuate that the procedure adopted is so opposed to public policy that it merely requires to be narrated and the case rested.
49. The State and the company submit in unison that when the records came to the notice of the present directors of the company, several alleged applications made by the allottees were not on record. The company says that though several of the petitions rely on received copies of the applications made by the petitioners for allotment of land under the chairman's discretionary quota, the purported rubber stamp apparently acknowledging the receipt thereof is not the one available with the company. They suggest that some applications may have been ante-dated or not made at all; yet the allotments awarded on extraneous considerations under the then chairman's discretionary quota. The State and the company make out that upon going through the records available in the company, the present directors, who are nominees of the State government, discovered the irregular and improper allotment of plots made under the chairman's discretionary quota without reference to the guidelines and without there being any material to demonstrate the application of the mind to any request for allotment. The company says that it was faced with a Hobson's choice of ignoring the colossal irregularity or being required to annul all the allotments made arbitrarily, whether under the chairman's discretionary quota or by the board, irrespective of possession being made over in certain cases and construction also being fully or substantially completed on the plots.
50. The State and the company say that in such circumstances the company was constrained to try and ensure that the further mischief set afoot by the whimsical allotment of plots under the chairman's discretionary quota or by the previous board was immediately arrested. The company maintains that it decided to make a distinction between residential plots and non-residential plots on its perception that residential plots would be less amenable to continuous commercial exploitation. The company submits that it decided to cancel the allotments made under the chairman's discretionary quota or by the previous board if the letters of intimation pertaining to residential plots were issued on or after February 28, 2011 and if the letters of firm allotment in respect of non- residential plots were issued after February 28, 2011.
51. The company has made a distinction between the two generic forms of the initial letters that it addressed to all allottees of land in New Town. Typically, and as is evident from the records and all the petitions, an initial letter of intimation would be issued by the company to the applicants informing the applicants that an approval had been accorded for allotment of a plot to the applicants whether for residential or for a specified commercial purpose. There appears to have been a printed format of such letters (or a soft format thereof) which had blanks to be filled up by inserting the relevant details. It is such letters of in-principle acceptance of the applications that the company refers to as the letters of intimation, though this distinction between a letter of intimation and a firm letter of allotment attempted to be made by the company at the hearing is at variance with how the board of directors of the company considered the matter as evident from the minutes of the board meetings. As to the firm letters of allotment, the company says that such letter would be the one informing the applicant of the particular plot allotted to the applicant, the price of the land and the schedule of payments.
52. The petitioners have referred to several judgments in support of the various contentions raised by them. They first rely on a judgment reported at (1999) 1 Cal LT (HC) 220 (Indian Oil Corporation v. Ujjal Chowdhury) for the proposition that when a process has started prior to any election being announced and the model code of conduct coming into effect, the continuation or completion of such process would not be in violation of the model code. In that case, an advertisement was issued in October, 1995 inviting applications for selection of LPG distributors. Upon applications being received interviews were conducted, but prior to the issuance of the letter of intent to the writ petitioners the Election Commission announced the schedule for the General Elections to the 11th Lok Sabha on March 20, 1996. The letter of intent issued to the petitioners was subsequently revoked as it had been issued when the model code of conduct was in operation. The challenge launched by the writ petitioners to such revocation succeeded before a single Bench. In the appeal, the Judges differed and a reference was accordingly made under Clause 36 of the Letters Patent to a referee Judge. It was held in such reference that since applications had been invited and the process for selection had been set into motion and the interviews held prior to the model code of conduct coming into force, the letter of intent issued to the distributors after the model code came into effect could not be annulled only on such ground. The judgment emphasises that the purpose of the model code is to ensure that the election is held in a fair and free atmosphere and that the party in power does not exploit its official position by doling out patronage to the electorate so as to influence the minds of the voters while exercising their franchise.
53. An unreported judgment delivered on February 10, 2014 in WP No. 7797 (W) of 2012 (Asutosh Ghosh v. State of West Bengal) by a single Bench of this court has been cited by the petitioners for the proposition that unless an authority vested with the jurisdiction to take a decision is clothed with the power to review the decision, the original decision cannot be revisited. The judgment was rendered in the context of a foreign liquor off-shop license granted to the writ petitioners under the Bengal Exercise Act, 1909 and the relevant rules framed thereunder. The provisions recognise the district magistrate to be the ex-officio collector in the district and, as such, the licensing authority. In that case a licence was issued to the writ petitioners in November, 2005 and the petitioner started and operated the business till the middle of 2011 when complaints against the location of the shop were made to the excise authorities. The district magistrate as the collector undertook the exercise of making re-measurements to ascertain whether the licence originally issued to the petitioner was in accordance with the mandatory provision in such regard. The petitioner questioned the authority of the collector to look into the complaint after a lapse of six years from the issuance of the licence. The collector disregarded such objection and passed an order for closing down the off-shop. The primary ground urged in challenging the collector's decision in this court was that such official assumed a jurisdiction which he did not possess. The court referred to Section 8 of the parent statute that governs matters relating to "Control, Appeal and Revision", and held that it "is settled law that unless the power of review is conferred by statute on an administrative authority, it has no inherent power of review."
54. The proposition is inapposite in the present context. Apart from the fact that in every case it cannot be said that a previous wrong by an administrative authority cannot be righted however opposed to public interest or public policy the original decision may have been, in that case, the issuance of the licence had been acted upon and the liquor shop was functional for more than six years before the perceived erroneous issuance of the licence was sought to be corrected at the behest of some neighbours. Indeed, one of the aspects dwelt on in such unreported judgment was of the licensee having continued business in accordance with the terms of the licence for a substantial period of time. Several Supreme Court judgments noticed later recognise the power of an administrative authority to cancel a process which is opposed to public interest.
55. The seven-Judge decision in the first Judges' case reported at 1981 (Supp) SCC 87 (S.P. Gupta v. Union of India) has been placed by the petitioners in the lead matter for the dilution therein at paragraph 20 of the report of the strict rule of locus standi and the acknowledgment therein of "public interest litigation" - litigation undertaken for the purpose of redressing public injury, enforcing public duty, protecting social, collective, 'diffused' rights and interests or vindicating public interest ... (by) any citizen who is acting bona fide and who has sufficient interest ..." The petitioners in the lead matter say that they have no right to institute any public interest litigation in respect of the allotments made in similar circumstances to other allottees which have not been cancelled by the respondent authorities. Such petitioners claim that since they have a direct interest in the matter of allotment of plots in New Town or the cancellation of such allotments, their only chance to ensure that the State under the present regime lives up to the command of Article 14 of the Constitution is to assert the same and attain the objective in the present proceedings and not by way of any future or further public interest litigation.
56. There is a semblance of substance in what the petitioners in the lead matter submit on such count. By virtue of the business allocated to the Judges of this court by the Chief Justice, public interest litigation in this court is taken up by a Division Bench. There is also a view expressed in a Division Bench judgment [Sohan Lal Baid v. State of West Bengal (AIR 1990 Cal 160)] that any matter taken by any Bench which does not fall within the business specifically allotted to such Bench or has not been otherwise expressly assigned to it, would be an act inherently lacking in jurisdiction. As a consequence, the operation of the principles as established by judicial pronouncement may preclude the petitioners from questioning the propriety of the allotments made in similar circumstances in favour of persons whose allotments have not been cancelled pursuant to the drive by which the allotments in most of the present cases have been annulled.
57. The more important aspect of S.P. Gupta, however, is in its recognition of public interest being the touchstone on which administrative decision ought to be founded.
58. Further judgments have been brought by the other petitioners in support of their challenge to the annulment of the allotment of plots made in their favour. A decision reported at (1988) 4 SCC 534 (Bharat Singh v. State of Haryana) has been placed for the recognition therein at paragraph 13 of the report that there is a distinction between pleadings governed by the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 and petitions or affidavits filed in proceedings under Article 226 of the Constitution. The passage placed from the relevant paragraph provides as follows:
"13. ... In our opinion, when a point which is ostensibly a point of law is required to be substantiated by facts, the party raising the point, if he is the writ petitioner, must plead and prove such facts by evidence which much appear from the writ petition and if he is the respondent, from the counter-affidavit. If the facts are not pleaded or the evidence in support of such facts is not annexed to the writ petition or to the counter-affidavit, as the case may be, the court will not entertain the point. In this context, it will not be out of place to point out that in this regard there is a distinction between a pleading under the Code of Civil Procedure and a writ petition or a counter- affidavit. While in a pleading, that is, a plaint or a written statement, the facts and not evidence are required to be pleaded, in a writ petition or in the counter-affidavit not only the facts but also the evidence in proof of such facts have to be pleaded and annexed to it. ..."
59. The petitioners rely on the judgment to suggest that to the extent the State and the company have criticised the system of allotment of plots in New Town in excess of what appears in the affidavits filed by the company, the same should not be countenanced. They also rely on the proposition to the extent that the distinction made in paragraph 20 of the supplementary affidavit is at variance with the resolutions passed at the meetings of the board of directors of the company.
60. On similar lines, the petitioners refer to a judgment reported at (1979) 3 SCC 371 (Shankar Chakravarti v. Britannia Biscuit Co. Ltd) for the proposition at paragraph 32 of the report that an allegation which is not pleaded, even if there is any evidence in support of it, cannot be examined because the other side has no notice of it and, if entertained, it would amount to granting an unfair advantage to the first party. Thus, the petitioners contend, the case made out by the State and the company herein, that the allotment of plots made in New Town
- whether in-principle allotments or firm allotments - were illegal or improper, should not be accepted as the decision-making process culminating in such allotments being made has not been appropriately or adequately questioned in the company's affidavits. The petitioners refer to another judgment reported at (2000) 2 SCC 367 (Murray & Co. v. Ashok Kr. Newatia) for the principle that a false statement made in an affidavit filed in court would amount to contempt of court as it tantamounts to obstruction of justice.
61. On the aspect that only the reasons contained in the letters issued for cancellation of the allotments can be seen in support of the decision embodied therein, the petitioners refer to the oft-quoted Constitution Bench judgment reported at (1978) 1 SCC 405 (Mohinder Singh Gill v. The Chief Election Commissioner, New Delhi) for the opinion therein that when a statutory functionary makes an order based on certain grounds, the validity of such order "must be judged by the reasons so mentioned and cannot be supplemented by fresh reasons in the shape of affidavits or otherwise." The petitioners maintain that since the primary ground asserted in the impugned letters of cancellation - that all the allotments were in violation of the model code of conduct - is frivolous and untenable, such notices are liable to be quashed as the other grounds contained therein are vague, unsubstantiated and stereotyped without making any distinction between one allottee and the other.
62. The petitioners also cite the famous judgment of cancellation of petrol pump dealerships reported at (1996) 6 SCC 530 (Common Cause, A Registered Society v. Union of India). Though the petitioners place paragraph 25 of the report to criticise the impugned cancellation of allotments in their favour as they claim to have been picked up arbitrarily and in a discriminatory manner, the relevant passage is of significance in the backdrop of the primary consideration in the present proceedings:
"25. ... The allotment orders which are now before the Court clearly indicate that leaving the authorities to enjoy absolute discretion even within the guidelines would inevitably lead to gross violation of the constitutional norms when the persons for allotment are picked up arbitrarily and discriminatorily."
63. Since the celebrated judgment, which deals with misfeasance in public office, malicious abuse of power and deliberate mal-administration, has been cited by the petitioners, the most important message in such judgment must be noticed: that "in the matter of grant of largesses including award of jobs, contracts, quotas and licences, the Government must act in fair and just manner and any arbitrary distribution of wealth would violate the law of the land." The Supreme Court had no hesitation in naming the concerned minister in that matter and holding that he had "acted in utter violation of the law laid down by this Court and has also infracted Article 14 of the Constitution of India ... betrayed the trust reposed in him ..." The court also observed that with more discretionary powers in the field of distribution of government wealth in various forms, if a public servant abuses his office by an act of omission or commission, and the consequence of that is injury to an individual or loss of public property, an action may be maintained against such public servant. The judgment in that case and the observation against the concerned minister were based on the records pertaining to the applications made for allotment of petrol pumps and file notings briefly indicating the reasons in support of the allotments. Paragraph 20 of the report is relevant in the larger context of the present matter:
"20. The allotments have been made by the Minister either on the ground of poverty or unemployment. Assuming that the allottees belong to either of these two categories then how the Minister has selected them out of millions of poor and unemployed in this country. As mentioned above no criteria was fixed, no guidelines were kept in view, none knew how many petrol pumps were available for allotment, applications were not invited and the allotments of petrol pumps were made in an arbitrary and discriminatory manner."
64. One of the petitioners has referred to the observation made on arbitrariness in exercising discretionary power by a public servant in the judgment reported at (2003) 2 SCC 673 (Onkar Lal Bajaj v. Union of India). As in the case of Capt. Satish Sharma, a news article in The Indian Express newspaper led to the complaint before the court regarding allotment of retail outlets for petroleum products on arbitrary, politically motivated and extraneous considerations. The news article attributed political patronage in the grant of dealership and distributorship. As a result of the controversy and the question being raised in the Parliament in such regard which resulted in proceedings in one of the houses to be stalled, the Prime Minister reviewed the allotment of petrol pumps, LPG gas and kerosene agencies by public sector oil companies on August 5, 2002 and directed the relevant ministry to initiate steps to cancel all allotments made with effect from January, 2000 till then. The effect of such decision was the cancellation of all merit panels numbering 3760 that had been prepared by district selection boards after considering thousands of applications and interviewing many of them. All those selected by the district selection boards, except 214, had been issued letters of intent and in 2248 cases agreements had been executed between the oil companies and the dealers or distributors. Several petitions were filed in various High Courts challenging the legality of the decision to cancel the allotments. Such petitions were transferred by the Supreme Court to itself and the matter decided by the judgment cited.
65. The Supreme Court noticed that the matter had been triggered off by a media expose. The issues relevant for consideration were framed in the form of the following questions at paragraph 20 of the report:
"20. ... Is the number of the alleged tainted allottees of such a magnitude that the fair play demanded cancellation of all en masse? Did anybody apply his mind as to whether the insinuations of political connection/patronage were at least prima facie of any substance? Is such a drastic action, on the facts and circumstances of the case, not arbitrary, whimsical and, thus, unsustainable? ..."
66. The petitioner in WP 4574(W) of 2012, who has relied on such judgment, places particular emphasis on paragraph 27 of the report for the proposition that unequals cannot be clubbed together; on paragraph 35 of the report for the principle that "public interest" or "probity in governance" cannot be put in a straitjacket; on paragraph 36 thereof for the observation that the "role model for governance and decision taken thereof should manifest equity, fair play and justice"; and, on paragraph 45 for the finding that resorting to cancellation of all allotments was worse than the problem as the "Cure was worse than the disease."
67. The Supreme Court noticed the case of Capt. Satish Sharma and held that nothing tangible was brought to its notice that warranted the cancellation of all the allotments merely because a controversy had arisen. Before quashing the impugned decision and setting up a committee to scrutinise the 413 cases which had been specifically reported in the newspaper as tainted, the court enunciated the following legal position at paragraph 45 of the report:
"45. The solution by resorting to cancellation of all was worse than the problem. Cure was worse than the disease. Equal treatment to unequals is nothing but inequality. To put both the categories - tainted and the rest - on a par is wholly unjustified, arbitrary, unconstitutional being violative of Article 14 of the Constitution. It is apparent from the guidelines that the dealerships and distributorships were provided to be given to the allottees as a welfare measure. Even in respect of open category there is a limitation for the income of the applicant being not more than 2 lakhs per annum so as to be eligible for consideration by DSBs. DSBs are required to consider the applications within the parameters of the guidelines and select the best applicant. If DSBs in some cases have selected someone not on merits but as a result of political connections/considerations and positions of the applicant, undoubtedly such allotments deserve to be quashed. In Common Cause case this Court on examination of the facts held that the allotment to the sons of the Ministers were only to oblige the Ministers. The allotments to the members of the Oil Selection Boards and their/Chairmen's relations had been done to influence them and to have favours from them. It was observed that a Minister who is the executive head of the department concerned, when distributing benefits and largesses in a welfare State in the form of allotment of plots, houses, petrol pumps, gas agencies, mineral leases, contracts, quotas and licences etc. has to deal with people's property in a fair and just manner. He holds all these as a trust on behalf of the people. He cannot commit breach of the trust reposed in him by the people."
68. The petitioners in WP 2565(W) of 2014 have relied on a judgment reported at (2011) 9 SCC 286 (Andhra Pradesh Dairy Development Corporation Federation v. B. Narasimha Reddy) for the observation therein at paragraph 40 of the report that upon the change of a government, it is the duty of the new regime to carry on the unfinished job of the previous government. However, as would be evident from the exception recognised in the general operation of such rule in the same paragraph of the report, the judgment may not further the petitioners' cause in the present proceedings:
"40. In the matter of the Government of a State, the succeeding Government is duty-bond to continue and carry on the unfinished job of the previous Government, for the reason that the action is that of the "State", within the meaning of Article 12 of the Constitution, which continues to subsist and therefore, it is not required that the new Government can plead contrary to the State action taken by the previous Government in respect of a particular subject. The State, being a continuing body can be stopped from changing its stand in a given case, but where after holding enquiry it came to the conclusion that action was not in conformity with law, the doctrine of estopple would not apply. Thus, unless the act done by the previous Government is found to be contrary to the statutory provisions, unreasonable or against policy, the State should not change its stand merely because the other political party has come into power. "Political agenda of an individual or a political party should not be subversive of rule of law." The Government has to rise above the nexus of vested interest and nepotism, etc. as the principles of governance have to be tested on the touchstone of justice, equity and fair play. The decision must be taken in good faith and must be legitimate. ..."
69. The petitioners in WP No. 21411(W) of 2013 refer to a judgment reported at (2011) 3 SCC 464 (Pragati Mahila Mandal, Nanded v. Municipal Council, Nanded). A charitable trust made a request to the relevant municipal council for allotment of a plot of land for starting a school to provide education, especially for girls. An allotment was made in the year 1984 on a 60-year lease. A petition was filed before the Aurangabad Bench of the Bombay High Court by way of public interest litigation, challenging the allotment. The petitioner died during the pendency of the matter and advocate formerly appearing for the petitioner was appointed amicus curiae since the court had already taken cognisance of the matter complained of. The High Court set aside the allotment. In the appeal arising out of the special leave petition filed before the Supreme Court, such court noticed that one of the respondents to the writ petition had filed an independent suit against the allottee and failed. The special leave petition from the order dismissing the relevant suit had also been withdrawn. On the ground that the legality of the allotment had been duly pronounced upon by the High Court, albeit in a different matter, and the further grounds that the project was for a noble cause and the authorities had the power to lease out government land for educational purposes, the Supreme Court set aside the High Court order and upheld the allotment.
70. The petitioners in WP 3132(W) of 2012 have relied on a judgment reported at (2011) 8 SCC 737 (State of Tamil Nadu v. K. Shyam Sunder) for the proposition that a change of the political party in government would not imply that decisions taken by the previous government ought to be reversed. The issue that arose before the Supreme Court is evident from paragraph 16 of the report: that "the law does not permit change of policies merely because of another political party with a different political philosophy comes in power ... " The judgment quoted from Onkar Lal Bajaj and another decision to consider the circumstances when a "Government should revoke a decision taken by an earlier Government." It concluded, at paragraph 35 of the report, "that unless it is found that act done by the authority earlier in existence either contrary to statuary provision, is unreasonable, or is against public interest, the State should not change its stand merely because the other political party has come into power."
71. Another judgment reported at (2007) 9 SCC 593 (Popcorn Entertainment v. City Industrial Development Corporation) has been brought by the petitioners in WP 7752(W) of 2012 for the proposition that while developing a township the objective of the planning authorities is not to earn money but to provide a systematic and all-round development of the area. In that case, the allotment of a plot of land in favour of the appellant was cancelled on the ground that the allotment was opposed to public policy and was made without issuance of any tender. The appellant-allottee questioned the cancellation on the ground that it had been singled out for such treatment though hundreds of allotments made without issuance of tender were allowed to remain. The Supreme Court read the land policy of the development authority to permit it to consider individual applications without inviting tenders. In course of setting aside the judgment of the Bombay High Court dismissing the writ petition on the ground that the appellant had an equally efficacious remedy of filing a civil suit, the Supreme Court observed, at paragraph 48 of the report, as follows:
"48. ... It has been held by several decisions of this Court that while developing a new township the objective of the planning authorities is not to earn money but to provide for systematic and all-round development of the area so that the purpose of setting up the township is achieved by more and more people wanting to live in the area in view of the various amenities being provided in the area. ..."
72. The petitioners in WP 7084(W) of 2012 have placed a judgment reported at (1988) 1 SCC 86 (Delhi Cloth & General Mills Ltd v. Union of India) to suggest that the doctrine of promissory estoppel would apply in this case. Paragraph 18 of the report has been placed where it was observed that the principle of promissory estoppel is now more refined than it was at its formative stage: it is no longer necessary for a party to invoke such principle only if he suffered 'detriment' or 'prejudice'; all that is now required is that the party asserting the estoppel must have acted upon the assurance given to him. The doctrine of promissory estoppel was, however, found not to be applicable in that case and it was further observed, at paragraph 25 of the report, that the doctrine "cannot be used to compel the public bodies or the government to carry out the representation or promise which is contrary to law or which is outside their authority or power." The court went on to add that such estoppel stems from the equitable doctrine and, as such, "cannot be invoked if it is found to be inequitable or unjust in its enforcement".
73. The petitioners in WP 21310(W) of 2011 have relied on the judgments reported at (1974) 1 SCC 345 (Pooran Mal v. The Director of Inspection) and (1996) 2 SCC 37 (State of H.P. v. Prithi Chand) on the aspect of copies of the company's records being available with some or most of the petitioners, particularly the rejected allottees of non-residential plots in New Town. The celebrated Constitution Bench judgment in Pooran Mal dealt with the aspect of evidence that is unearthed in course of an illegal exercise. The Supreme Court quoted with approval a Privy Council judgment that in considering whether evidence is admissible, the only test to be applied is whether it is relevant to the matters in issue; and, if it is admissible, the court should not be concerned with how it was obtained. In Prithi Chand the judgment in Pooran Mal was noticed and it was reiterated that merely because the evidence was obtained in course of an illegal search and seizure operation, such evidence could not be discarded. It is necessary to record the circumstances in which these two judgments came to be cited by the relevant petitioners. As noticed earlier, several of the petitioners, particularly the allottees of non-residential plots, have appended copies of the company's documents that they would not be expected to be in possession of. Upon the court quizzing some of the petitioners as to how they could lay their hands on photocopies of the company's records, they have come up with Pooran Mal as the answer. However, the Constitution Bench judgment is only an authority for the proposition that relevant material should not be shunned because it may have been discovered in an irregular or illegal manner. It does not follow that when private parities are found to be in possession of copies of key records of a government body, an adverse inference as to their nexus with those in control of the body may not be drawn upon a suitable explanation not being furnished.
74. The petitioners in WP 224(W) of 2014 have referred to two judgments for the proposition that a change of the political dispensation in the government should not affect the decisions taken by the previous regime. The judgment reported at (2002) 2 SCC 507 (State of Haryana v. State of Punjab) was rendered in a suit under Article 131 of the Constitution by which Haryana wanted the concluded agreements with Punjab pertaining to the Sutlej-Yamuna link canal project to be enforced. It was in course of deciding such issue that the Supreme Court observed that "decisions taken at the governmental level should not be so easily nullified by a change of Government and by some other political party assuming power, particularly when such a decision affects some other States and the interest of the nation as a whole."
75. In the decision reported at (2014) 2 SCC 401 (J. Jayalalithaa v. The State of Karnataka) the Supreme Court repeated the observation in K. Shyam Sunder (supra) that "unless it is found that the act done by the authority earlier is either contrary to the statutory provisions or unreasonable, or is against public interest, the State should not change its stand merely because the other political party has come into power."
76. Another judgment reported at (2014) 13 SCC 692 (PRP Exports v. State of Tamil Nadu) has been brought by the same petitioner for the proposition that in a case where larger public interest is involved, the events subsequent to the institution of the petition could be looked into. The Supeme Court quoted the following passage from a judgment reported at (2010) 6 SCC 614 (All India Recruitment Board v. K. Shyam Kumar) to distinguish the dictum in Mohinder Singh Gill (supra):
"45. We are of the view that the decision maker can always rely upon subsequent materials to support the decision already taken when larger public interest is involved. This court in Madhyamic Shiksha Mandal, MP v. Abhilash Shiksha Prasar Samiti [(1998) SCC 236] found no irregularity in placing reliance on a subsequent report to sustain the cancellation of the examination conducted where there were serious allegations of mass copying. The principle laid down in Mohinder Singh Gill case is not applicable where larger public interest is involved and in such situations, additional grounds can be looked into to examine the validity of the finding recorded by the High Court that the report of CBI cannot be looked into to examine the validity of the order dated 4-6-2004, cannot be sustained."
77. The petitioner in WP 13996(W) of 2013 has relied on a judgment reported at (2014) 4 SCC 186 (S.V.A. Steel Re-rolling Mills Ltd v. State of Kerala) for the proposition that it would be unfair and immoral on the part of the State not to act as per its promise. In that case the relevant State government framed a policy to encourage the setting-up of new manufacturing units in the State by declaring to give continuous electricity supply at a particular rate to certain new units. In pursuance of such policy, the appellants before the Supreme Court established manufacturing units in the State. The subsequent conduct of the State amounted to the promise being breached. It was in such context that the Supreme Court made the following observation at paragraph 30 of the report, which may not be apposite in the present situation:
"30. Before laying down any policy which would give benefits to its subjects, the State must think about pros and cons of the policy and its capacity to give the benefits. Without proper appreciation of all the relelvant factors, the State should not give any assurance, not only because that would be in violation of the principles of promissory estoppel but it would be unfair and immoral on the part the State not to act as per its promise."
78. The petitioner in WP 27353(W) of 2013 has referred to several judgments as to the desirability of oral instructions in administrative matters. According to such petitioner, the doctrine of dictation has no place in administrative law and if the State or any functionary requires a public body to do a certain thing, the instructions must be reduced in writing. The first of the judgments, reported at (2006) 7 SCC 172 (State Inspector of Police v. Surya Sankaram Karri), pertained to the sanction for prosecution granted to investigate into an offence under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988. At paragraph 16 of the report, it was held that the issuance of an oral direction was not contemplated under the relevant statute and, in such light, it was observed that the concept of issuing an oral direction "is unknown in administrative law" and that statutory functionaries are enjoined with a duty to pass written orders. Section 17 of the Prevention of Corruption Act with its non obstante clause permits an investigation of misconduct by a public servant by police officers of the ranks specified therein. The second proviso to the Section mandates that investigation in certain cases not be conducted without the order of a police officer not below the rank of a superintendent. It was such statutory condition that had not been complied in that case which was admitted by the investigating officer to the extent that he had not received any authorisation letter but had been orally authorised to conduct the investigation. It was the mandate of the statute that prompted the observation at paragraph 16 of the report, which has been sought to be cited completely out of context in the present case.
79. Another judgment, reported at (2010) 11 SCC 374 (MRF Ltd v. Manohar Parrikar), has been brought for the discussion at paragraph 72 of the report that the Rules of Business framed to fulfill the mandate of Articles 154, 163 and 166 of the Constitution are mandatory and not directory. The decision in that case involved the abandonment of revenue pursuant to a notification issued by the government of Goa for grant of rebate to industrial consumers of electricity in the State. The Supreme Court noticed that the Rules of Business of the State government mandated that any proposal which was likely to be converted into a decision of the State government involving the abandonment of revenue for which there was no provision in the Appropriation Act had to be processed after the concurrence of the Finance Department and the approval of the council of ministers. It was in such context that the Supreme Court held that the decision of the State government ought to reflect the collective wisdom of the council of ministers or at least of the chief minister who heads the council. The principle has no manner of application in the present case; at any rate, except to the chagrin of the petitioners herein.
80. Three judgments have been cited by the petitioners in WP 2569(W) of 2014. In the judgment reported at (2004) 1 SCC 139 (State of Orissa v. Mangalam Timber Products Ltd), a plea was taken by the government of Orissa that since there was no contract in writing was entered into with the writ petitioners, the principle of promissory estoppel would not apply. The Supreme Court held that for "the applicability of the principle of estoppel it is not necessary that there must be a contract in writing entered into between the parties" and that when a representation was held out by the State and a party had acted thereupon, the State could not be permitted to resile from its position. There is no doubt that a State or other authority answering to that description under Article 12 of the Constitution has to be held responsible for its decisions as communicated to any person. Equally, if the State annuls its previous decision in public interest or on the ground that the initial decision was opposed to public policy, the doctrine of promissory estoppel may have to yield to larger public interest. In support of the petitioners' contention that the real issue in the present proceedings is the impugned decision of cancellation of the allotments and not the manner in which the allotments were made, they refer to a recent judgment reported at (2015) 2 SCC 796 (Census Commissioner v. R. Krishnamurthy) where the Supreme Court advocated the exercise of judicial restraint in matters pertaining to policy. The judgment quotes revered jurists as Felix Frankfurter and Benjamin N. Cardozo to hold that it is not within the domain of the courts "to embark upon an enquiry as to whether a particular public policy is wise and acceptable or whether a better policy could be evolved" since the court may only interfere if the policy framed is absolutely capricious or not informed by reasons or totally arbitrary or offending the basic requirements of Article 14 of the Constitution. The judgment may have been apposite if there was a policy that was discernible in the matter of allotment of plots in New Town under the erstwhile chairman's discretionary quota. The other judgment cited by the petitioners in WP 2569(W) of 2014 reported at (2015) 4 SCC 245 (Delhi State Industrial Development Corporation Limited v. Ashok Kumar Madan), where the Supreme Court considered the propriety of the cancellation of the allotment of a plot by a government body on the ground of non-payment. The writ petitioner before the High Court was running a commercial establishment in his residential premises and, pursuant to a direction of the Supreme Court for relocation of businees carried on in residential properties, he applied for the allotment of a plot and made a deposit therefor. A plot was allotted to the writ petitioner, but he failed to make the payment therefor within the time stipulated. Following the belated final payment made for the plot, the government body issued a communication to the writ petitioner seeking certain documents to facilitate possession of the plot being made over to him. However, before the possession was made over, the allotment was cancelled and the amount paid was refunded with interest. The petition under Article 226 of the Constitution was allowed by a single Bench on the ground that the government body had not corrected its mistake and had remained silent for four years after receiving the entire consideration. The order also noticed that the writ petitioner had paid interest on the delayed payment. The appeal was dismissed, resulting in the government body apporaching the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court upheld the impugned order on the ground that the reasons cited by the government body in cancelling the allotment, were, in the circumstances, not satisfactory and had been rejected by two courts. Though the petitioners in this case seek to rely on the ratio in such judgment in support of their contention that the reason proferred for cancelling their allotment is precious, the judgment may not be of any relevance in the context of the large-scale irregularities in the matter of allotment of plots under the chairman's discretionary quota.
81. The State and the company have also relied on a number of authorities to justify the cancellation of the allotment of certain plots in Rajarhat on the ground that the allotments had been improperly made.
82. A judgment pertaining to the construction of a high-end hotel in this city, reported at (1987) 2 SCC 295 (Sachidanand Pandey v. State of West Bengal), has been referred to by the respondent authorities for the proposition therein that public interest must be the paramount consideration in dealing with State or public property. Though the judgment is more famous for it quoting the profound reply of the wise Indian Chief of Seattle to the offer of the Great Chief in Washington to buy Indian land, paragraph 40 of the report has been placed for the present purpose:
"40. On a consideration of the relevant cases cited at the bar the following propositions may be taken as well established : State- owned or public-owned property is not to be dealt with at absolute discretion of the executive. Certain precepts and principles have to be observed. Public interest is the paramount consideration. One of the methods of securing the public interest, when it is considered necessary to dispose of a property, is to sell the property by public auction or by inviting tenders. Though that is the ordinary rule, it is not an invariable rule. There may be situations where there are compelling reasons necessitating departure from the rule but then the reasons for the departure must be rational and should not be suggestive of discrimination. Appearance of public justice is as important as doing justice. Nothing should be done which gives an appearance of bias, jobbery or nepotism."
83. Another judgment reported at (1980) 4 SCC 1 (Kasturi Lal Lakshmi Reddy v. State of Jammu and Kashmir) has been placed by the State for the proposition that when governmental action is found to be wanting in reasonableness or lacking in public interest, it would be liable to struck down as invalid. The State says that when the records pertaining to the allotment of plots in New Town, whether under the erstwhile chairman's discretionary quota or by the board of directors of the company, came to the notice of the present board of directors of the company, the arbitrary manner in which the discretion was exercised without assigning any reasons and on no discernable basis, obliged the company to undo the wrong to the extent that the transactions had not been concluded or possession of the plots made over to the unworthy allottees.
84. The respondent authorities have relied on paragraph 10 of the report where the celebrated case of Ramana Dayaram Shetty [(1979) 3 SCC 489] was noticed that "(s)ome interests in government largess, formerly regarded as privileges, have been recognised as rights, while others have been given legal protection not only by forging procedural safeguards but also by confining, structuring and checking government discretion in the matter of grant of such largess." The Supreme Court observed that the discretion of the government in such cases was not unlimited and the government could not confer benefits "in its arbitrary discretion or at its sweet will or on such terms as it chooses in its absolute discretion." The court reminded that there were two limitations imposed by law which structured and controlled the discretion of the government in such regard:
the terms on which largesse may be granted; and, the persons who may be the recipients of such largesse.
85. It went on to say that unlike a private individual, the State could not act as it pleased in the matter of distributing largesse; that while a private individual would ordinarily be guided by economic considerations of self-gain and he may also act contrary to his self-interest, but the government would not be "free to act as it likes in granting largess such as awarding a contract or selling or leasing out its property". The constitutional power conferred on the government, the judgment instructs, cannot not be exercised by it arbitrarily or capriciously or in an unprincipled manner; it has to be exercised for the public good as every activity of the government has a public element to it and it must, therefore, be informed with reasons and guided by public interest. The court proceeded to recount the tests of reasonableness in its famous previous judgments as V. G. Row [(1952) SCR 597], Maneka Gandhi [(1978) 1 SCC 248], and E. P. Royappa [(1974) 4 SCC 3] to express the following view at paragraph 14 of the report:
"14. Where any governmental action fails to satisfy the test of reasonableness and public interest discussed above and is found to be wanting in the quality of reasonableness or lacking in the element of public interest, it would be liable to be struck down as invalid. It must follow as a necessary corollary from this proposition that the government cannot act in a manner which would benefit a private party at the cost of the State; such an action would be both unreasonable and contrary to public interest. The Government, therefore, cannot, for example, give a contract or sell or lease out its property for a consideration less than the highest that can be obtained for it, unless of course there are other considerations which render it reasonable and in public interest to do so. Such considerations may be that some directive principle is sought to be advanced or implemented or that the contract or the property is given not with a view to earning revenue but for the purpose of carrying out a welfare scheme for the benefit of a particular group or section of people deserving it or that the person who has offered a higher consideration is not otherwise fit to be given the contract or the property. We have referred to these considerations only illustratively, for there may be an infinite variety of considerations which may have to be taken into account by the government in formulating its policies and it is on a total evaluation of various considerations which have weighed with the government in taking a particular action, that the court would have to decide whether the action of the government is reasonable and in public interest. But one basic principle which must guide the court in arriving at its determination on this question is that there is always a presumption that the governmental action is reasonable and in public interest and it is for the party challenging its validity to show that it is wanting in reasonableness or is not informed with public interest. This burden is a heavy one and it has to be discharged to the satisfaction of the court by proper and adequate material. The court cannot lightly assume that the action taken by the government is unreasonable or without public interest because, as we said above, there are a large number of policy considerations which must necessarily weigh with the government in taking action and therefore the court would not strike down governmental action as invalid on this ground, unless it is clearly satisfied that the action is unreasonable or not in public interest. But where it is so satisfied, it would be the plainest duty of the court under the Constitution to invalidate the governmental action. This is one of the most important functions of the court and also one of the most essential for preservation of the rule of law. It is imperative in a democracy governed by the rule of law that governmental action must be kept within the limits of the law and if there is any transgression, the court must be ready to condemn it. It is a matter of historical experience that there is a tendency in every government to assume more and more powers and since it is not an uncommon phenomenon in some countries that the legislative check is getting diluted, it is left to the court as the only other reviewing authority under the Constitution to be increasingly vigilant to ensure observance with the rule of law and in this task, the court must not flinch or falter. It may be pointed out that this ground of invalidity, namely, that the governmental action is unreasonable or lacking in the quality of public interest, is different from that of mala fides though it may, in a given case, furnish evidence of mala fides."
86. A more recent decision, reported at (2011) 5 SCC 29 (Akhil Bhartiya Upbhokta Congress v. State of Madhya Pradesh), has been carried by the company for the acknowledgement therein that no functionary of the State or public authority has an absolute or unfettered discretion as the "very idea of unfettered discretion is totally incompatible with the doctrine of equality enshrined in the Constitution and is an antithesis to the concept of the rule of law." The matter that fell for consideration in that case was the allotment of a 20- acre piece of land near Bhopal to a trust without any advertisement and without inviting other similar organisations to participate in the process of allotment. A public-spirited body challenged the allotment of land before the Madhya Pradesh High Court, which summarily rejected the writ petition by observing that the land belonged to the government and it was for the government to decide whom to allot the same as per its policy and no case of violation of any legal or constitutional right was made out by the petitioner. Affidavits on the issue were filed for the first time before the Supreme Court. Before annulling the allotment, the Supreme Court referred to American, English and Indian decisions to appreciate the maxims: "Where discretion is absolute, man has always suffered", "Rule of law may be said to be the sworn enemy of caprice" and "Discretion means sound discretion guided by law ... not by humour; it must not be arbitrary, vague and fanciful." The judgment noticed Kasturi Lal Lakshmi Reddy and the case of Capt. Satish Sharma to hold that every action of the State or its agencies or instrumentalities to give largesse or confer benefit must be founded on a sound, transparent, discernible and well-defined policy, which ought to be made known to the public by providing for adequate publicity; that "distribution of largesse like allotment of land, grant of quota, permit licence, etc. by the State and its agencies/instrumentalities should always be done in a fair and equitable manner and the element of favouritism or nepotism shall not influence the exercise of discretion ..."
87. The respondent authorities refer to another judgment pertaining to allotment of land to a famous personality reported at (2011) 6 SCC 125 (Humanity v. State of West Bengal). A distinguished son of the soil had, in that case, been made a one-off allotment of a plot in Salt Lake in 2009. Offers were invited by an advertisement which earmarked the relevant plot for setting up an integrated school from the primary level to the higher secondary level with extra- curricular activities. The allottee applied pursuant to the advertisement and succeeded. About a year after obtaining possession of the plot, the allottee wrote to the concerned minister that the plot was not big enough to set up a school with ICSE affiliation. The allottee expressed a desire to surrender the plot in exchange for a bigger one. Upon receipt of such letter, the concerned department allotted a different but bigger plot to the allottee. It was such subsequent allotment which was challenged by way of public interest litigation. This court repelled the challenge and such order was carried to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court allowed the appeal by cancelling the allotment after observing that it "is axiomatic that in order to achieve a bona fide end, the means must also justify the end."
88. Three recent judgments of the Supreme Court concerning matters that have rocked the country have been relied upon by the company in support of its decision to cancel the allotments that it found had been improperly made and where the transactions had not been concluded. The judgments in the 2G Spectrum case, the Presidential reference arising from the 2G Spectrum case and the Coal-blocks Allocation case have been cited by the company.
89. In the 2G Spectrum case, reported at (2012) 3 SCC 1 (Centre for Public Interest Litigation v. Union of India), the court held that the State was the trustee of the people and it could allocate natural resources only in public interest through a fair and transparent distribution process affording equal opportunity to all interested parties. The procedure adopted by the Department of Telecommunication in the grant of unified access service licence with 2G spectrum was questioned before the court on the ground that it was arbitrary, illegal and in derogation of Article 14 of the Constitution. The company in the present case relies on paragraph 89 of the report that speaks of distribution of natural resources to be guided by constitutional principles, including the doctrine of equality and larger public good, and the criticism of the first-cum- first-served policy and recognition of public auction as the most desirable process for distribution of natural resources in paragraphs 94 and 96 of the report.
90. Following the observation in the 2G Spectrum case that the distribution of natural resources should, preferably, be by public auction, a Presidential reference was made under Article 143 (1) of the Constitution to the Supreme Court. The opinion is reported at (2012) 10 SCC 1 (Natural Resources Allocation, In Re, Special Reference No. 1 of 2012). The company has placed copiously from the lead judgment, particularly the reference to Article 39 (b) of the Constitution that mandates that the ownership and control of material resources of the community are so distributed as best to sub-serve the common good. The Constitution Bench concluded that auction may not be the only manner by which natural resources may be distributed by the State. Paragraph 135 of the report appears to summarise the legal position:
"135. Therefore, a potential for abuse cannot be the basis for striking down a method as ultra vires the Constitution. It is the actual abuse itself that must be brought before the court for being tested on the anvil of constitutional provisions. In fact, it may be said that even auction has a potential of abuse, like any other method of allocation, but that cannot be the basis of declaring it as an unconstitutional methodology either. These drawbacks include cartelisation, the "winner's curse" (the phenomenon by which a bidder bids a higher, unrealistic and unexecutable price just to surpass the competition; or where a bidder, in case of multiple auctions, bids for all the resources and ends up winning licences for exploitation of more resources than he can pragmatically execute), etc. However, all the same, auction cannot be called ultra vires for the said reasons and continues to be an attractive and preferred means of disposal of natural resources especially when revenue maximisation is a priority. Therefore, neither auction, nor any other method of disposal can be held ultra vires the Constitution, merely because of a potential abuse."
91. In the Coal-blocks Allocation case, reported at (2014) 9 SCC 516 (Manohar Lal Sharma v. Principal Secretary), what fell for consideration by way of public interest litigation under Article 32 of the Constitution was the propriety of the allocation of coal-blocks made by the Union between 1993 and 2010. The company has, again, placed several paragraphs from the report. At paragraph 65 of the report, the court observed that allocation of a coal-block was not merely an identification exercise as it conferred a valuable right on the allottee. The court disagreed with the submission of the Union that the allocation of a coal-block did not amount to the grant of largesse and observed, at paragraph 76, that "such allocation has to meet the twin constitutional tests, one, the distribution of natural resources that vest in the State is to subserve the common good and, two, the allocation is not violative of Article 14." The judgment noticed several previous decisions referred to hereinabove and concluded that the entire process of allocation of coal-blocks suffered from the vice of arbitrariness and legal flaws, that guidelines had been honoured more in their breach and that there was no objective criterion for evaluation of comparative merits. The court held that the approach had been ad hoc and casual, that there was no fair and transparent procedure and that the ultimate result was the unfair distribution of national wealth where common good and public interest had suffered heavily.
92. The company refers to a passage from American Jurisprudence (2d), Volume 16A, paragraph 694 on the doctrine of impairment of obligation. It appears that the strictness with which the impairment clause was once regarded has been diluted in its liberal construction in modern times; that it now prohibits unreasonable impairment only; and, it is not an impediment to the State's authority to safeguard the vital interests of its people.
93. Much emphasis has been placed by the company on a judgment reported at (2015) 1 SCC 558 (City Industrial Development Corporation v. Platinum Entertainment) which pertained to the allotment of land by a statutory authority in the State of Maharashtra. The matter that reached the Supreme Court was a sequel to the Popcorn Entertainment Corporation case noticed earlier. Allotments of plots to three entities were cancelled, which resulted in petitions under Article 226 of the Constitution being brought before the Bombay High Court. Following the requests by the writ petitioners in those matters, commercial plots were allotted to them on leasehold basis. In certain cases the entire payment was received and even agreements to lease were entered into by the statutory body and the lessees. Notices of cancellation were issued and the agreements were sought to be repudiated. The statutory authority in that case was a town planning authority appointed under a State Act. Such statutory body contended that the allotments had been made pursuant to direct applications being made to office of the chief minister and a subsequent inquiry revealed that the allotments were illegal and had resulted in a massive financial loss to the State. The High Court quashed the order of cancellation, which was challenged before the Supreme Court. The judgment considered several authorities noticed herein and took cognisance of a report that observed that the allotments in that case were made in an arbitrary manner. It also saw that all three allotments were made in favour of entities controlled by a solitary individual. The court observed that no procedure was adopted by the statutory authority for allotment of the commercial plots "either by tender or by competitive bidding" and held that "no transparency has been maintained ... in making these allotments of the government land." The Supreme Court quoted several of its previous judgments pertaining to allotment of land, distribution of natural resources and grant of State largesse, wherein it had been asserted that actions of agencies of the State must be for the public good, for achieving the objects for which they exist and should not be arbitrary or capricious. The company focuses on paragraph 45 of the report where the Supreme Court found that while considering the propriety of the cancellation of the allotments, the High Court had ignored the circumstances in which the allotments had been made. The court observed that though the statutory authority had the power to make the allotments "but the conduct of such allotment should have been more clear and transparent and without presence of any element of favouritism and/or nepotism and without being influenced by any such thing in exercising the discretion ..." The appeal was allowed by upholding the cancellation since the statutory body "showed undue favour to the respondents and managed to allot the government land in favour of one person ..." The observation at paragraph 49 of the report is of some relevance in the present context:
"49. State and its agencies and instrumentalities cannot give largesse to any person at sweet will and whims of the political entities or officers of the State. However, decisions and action of the State must be founded on a sound, transparent and well-defined policy which shall be made known to the public. The disposal of the government land by adopting a discriminatory and arbitrary method shall always be avoided and it should be done in a fair and equitable manner as the allotment on favouritism or nepotism influences the exercises of discretion. Even assuming that if the rule or regulation prescribes the mode of allotment by entertaining individual application or by tenders or competitive bidding, the rule of law requires publicity to be given before such allotment is made. CIDCO authorities should not adopt a pick and choose method while allotting government land."
94. The company has referred to a judgment reported at (2008) 8 SCC 92 (State Bank of India v. S. N. Goyal) for the distinction made therein between the process of adjudication by a civil court and the exercise of the power of judicial review in proceedings under Article 226 of the Constitution. Paragraph 21 of the report has been placed in support of the respondents' contention in the present proceedings that the court may look into the records pertaining to the allotments made by the board of directors of the company and those under the chairman's discretionary quota to satisfy itself whether the allotments were justified or made on appropriate considerations:
"21. In the absence of appropriate pleading on a particular issue, there can be no adjudication of such issue. Adjudication of a dispute by a civil court is significantly different from the exercise of power of judicial review in a writ proceedings by the High Court. In a writ proceedings, the High Court can call for the record of the order challenged, examine the same and pass appropriate orders after giving an opportunity to the State or the statutory authority to explain any particular act or omission. In a civil suit parties are governed by rules of pleadings and there can be no adjudication of an issue in the absence of necessary pleadings."
95. As to the cut-off date of February 28, 2011 fixed by the company for cancellation of both non-residential and residential allotments, the company relies on three judgments. In the judgment reported at (2008) 14 SCC 702 (Government of Andhra Pradesh v. N. Subbarayudu), it was observed that the court must exercise judicial restraint and, ordinarily, leave it to the executive to fix the cut-off date as the government "must be left with some leeway and free play at the joints in this connection." In the next judgment reported at (2011) 8 SCC 269 (Orissa Power Transmission Corporation Limited v. Khageswar Sundaray), it was observed that the court would generally presume that a cut-off date had been fixed upon taking relevant considerations into account; and it would be for the party questioning the reasonableness thereof to substantiate the same. The other judgment on this aspect is reported at (2012) 1 SCC 226 (Union of India v. Nitdip Textile Processors Private Limited) where the Supreme Court observed that there was a broader power of classification in taxation matters than in some other exercises of legislation. But the court cautioned that the test is not one of wisdom, but of good faith.
96. The company has relied on Sachidanand Pandey (supra) and K. Shyam Kumar (supra) to suggest that though it is generally the rule that the reasons assigned by a State or such authority in support of a decision or particular action cannot, subsequently, be added to, when there is overwhelmingly consideration of public interest, additional reasons can be gone into. The following passage from paragraph 27 of the report in Sachidanand Pandey is apposite:
"27. ... The proposition that a decision must be arrived at after taking into account all relevant considerations, eschewing all irrelevant considerations cannot for a moment be doubted. We have already pointed out that relevant considerations were not ignored and, indeed, were taken into account by the Government of West Bengal. It is not one of those cases where the evidence is first gathered and a decision is later arrived at one fine morning and the decision is incorporated in a reasoned order. This is a case where discussions have necessarily to stretch over a long period of time. Several factors have to be independently and separately weighed and considered. This is a case where the decision and the reasons for the decision can only be gathered by looking at the entire course of events and circumstances stretching over the period from the initiation of the proposal to the taking of the final decision. It is important to note that unlike Mohinder Singh Gill case, where the Court was dealing with a statutory order made by a statutory functionary who could not therefore, be allowed to supplement the grounds of this order by later explanations, the present is a case where neither a statutory function nor a statutory functionary is involved but the transaction bears a commercial though public character which can only be settled after protracted discussion, clarification and consultation with all interested persons. The principle of Mohinder Singh Gill case, has no application to the factual situation here."
97. The individual features of the many petitions have been permitted to be placed by the several petitioners. The petitioners in the lead matter purchased a five-cottah plot of land in an area under the Rajarhat Police Station by a deed of conveyance executed on October 3, 1988 at a princely consideration of Rs.5,000/-. Such land was acquired under the Land Acquisition Act, 1894 for the Rajarhat New Township project in the year 2000 upon payment of a sum of Rs.39,540/- to the petitioners. The petitioners in the lead matter claim to have applied on March 29, 2008 for allotment of a 10-cottah plot for non-residential purpose under the chairman's discretionary quota. They introduced themselves as land-losers, referred to the advertisement issued on December 22, 2007 and disclosed that they intended to set up a multi-car showroom with a workshop and allied automobile services. They emphasised that the project would "facilitate the people of Rajarhat and ... generate employment of West Bengal."
98. It was such momentous application that was apparently taken up for consideration by the screening committee at its meeting of April 28, 2008 and recommended without any supporting reason, presumably because the application spoke eloquently for itself and could not have been improved upon. It appears that the commendable application was accepted as god-sent by the minister-chairman and he accorded his approval under the discretionary quota on February 17, 2011 which was intimated by the joint managing director of the company to the petitioners on February 25, 2011. Apart from the obvious merits of the application, the other aspect of note in the lead petition is the authority with which facts pertaining to the board meetings of the company, the deliberations and the minutes thereof have been disclosed in such petition. Despite the pointed question to the petitioners in the lead matter - and, indeed, to several other petitioners who have relied on copies of the company's documents (screening committee minutes and board minutes which have not been forwarded as extracts) - as to how photocopies of the company's records could be available to the petitioners, there has been no answer. The petitioners in the lead matter, however, insist that they had been favoured with an allotment since they were land-losers and they had submitted a project that the then chairman, in his discretion, regarded as capable of generating employment.
99. The company says that the application that may have been made by the lead petitioners cannot be found in the company's records. The company insists that not only did the purported application not indicate how the petitioners conformed to the eligibility criteria indicated in the guidelines for allotment of non-residential plots in New Town under the chairman's discretionary quota, but the allotment was made in dubious circumstances since no copy of the application is available in the records and the rubber-stamp on the received copy of the application is suspect. In the affidavit-in-opposition filed by the company in WP 5158(W) of 2013 the company has asserted at paragraph 10 that the similar rubber-stamp in that case was not the company's. The company says that several of the applications that have been relied on by many of the petitioners herein carry the same dubious rubber-stamp with a scribbled short signature of a person that the company and its officers claim not to be familiar with.
100. The petitioner in WP 37304(W) of 2013 refers to an even more lucrative employment opportunity that he presented by his application of November 5, 2007 that the chairman, in his wisdom, could never have refused. The petitioner sought a five-cottah plot on the excellent credentials of he being a young businessman from a family which was in the jewellery business for several generations. The petitioner did not refer to the earth-shattering employment opportunities that his project would generate but merely indicated that he intended to open a jewellery showroom "so that I can expand the family business." Such convincing application was approved on November 22, 2010 by the minister-chairman and the company informed the petitioner on February 1, 2011 that just as the petitioner has sought, a five-cottah plot had been allotted to him in New Town to establish his jewellery shop. As in several other cases, particularly in the allotment of non-residential plots, the initial letter of intimation was followed a couple of months later by a formal offer of allotment identifying the exact location of the plot. In this petitioner's case, the letter of allotment was issued on May 3, 2011 and the petitioner made substantial payment in terms thereof before the allotment was cancelled by a generic notice of December 2, 2013. This petitioner has also asserted that if the cancellation of the allotment in his favour is not revoked, all other allotments made under the chairman's discretionary quota and by the company should be annulled.
101. The company refers to the guidelines for allotment of non-residential plots under the chairman's discretionary quota, particularly the clauses therein pertaining to eligibility, preference and selection:
"2. ELIGIBILITY:
Individuals, Companies, Traders, Developers, Industrialists, Entrepreneurs, Voluntary Organizations, other Organizations, Cooperative Societies and Institutions including Educational Institutions applying for plot and intending to take up project as stated in para 1 must have experience in any one of the following activities:
a) Worked in the field of social welfare including health and other activities, like rural development, literacy, mother & child care, juvenile justice, care of the disabled and the old aged, control of drug abuse etc. benefiting, among others, the families belonging to lower income group /economically weaker section /BPL group / families of land losers in New Town Project.
b) Outstanding work performed benefiting the community as a whole for which International / National / State level award or award from a Govt. recognized Organization has been received by the Organization.
c) Activity or work performed in the field of Literature, Art, Culture, Cinema, Music, Sports and Games etc. for which International /National /State level award or award from a Govt. recognized Organization has been received by the Organization.
d) Worked for talent search and recognized performance,
especially from the poor students.
e) Worked in the backward areas of West Bengal and / or among
Scheduled Cast, Scheduled Tribe and other backward section of West Bengal
f) Considered to be eligible for setting up a project as required in New Town.
g) Land losers of New Town Project - individual person or
organization
h) Gallantry or other award winners - military, paramilitary,
Police, Civil
i) Eminent Persons or organizations in the field of law, medicine,
journalism, engineering, civil services, finance, accountancy, commerce & industry,
j) Freedom fighters and bonafide participants in post independence democratic movement
k) Non resident Indians
l) Ex- serviceman N.B.:
1) One person or organization can apply for one plot only 2) Applicant(s) must be competent to contract under the Indian Contract Act, 1872. 3) Price /Premium/Charge as value of land and other charges will be fixed as per existing norms of HIDCO. 3. PREFERENCE: Special credit will be given for allotment to those,- a) capable of preparing concept plan and implement a project on a smaller size of plot than the existing scale conventionally thought of or usually presumed to be required for setting up the said project, or, b) undertaken and intended to set up project or scheme having non-commercial approach, or, c) organizations /cooperative societies constituted with the land losers of New Town Project, or, d) undertaken and intended to take up welfare activities benefiting among others, the families belonging to lower income group /economically weaker section /BPL group/land losers, or, e) worked in the backward areas of the State like Sunderbans laterite zone etc. and amongst the backward classes 4. SELECTION:
Selection of eligible applicants for allotment of plots will be made by the Chairman at his discretion considering the eligibility, previous performance and preparation of concept plan of the project after examining the same in the light of the prescribed eligibility by a high level Committee. Decision of the Chairman, HIDCO shall be final.
N.B.:-
(I) Failure in getting plot in New Town will not constitute
sufficient reasons for selection.
(II) Incomplete /factually incorrect applications will be summarily
rejected."
102. The company refers to clause 5 of the guidelines that required documents and papers in support of the eligibility criteria to accompany the application, along with the certificate of registration of the organisation under the relevant statute. The company maintains that if it was imperative that documents be filed to enable the chairman to assess whether an applicant fulfilled the eligibility criteria, it is inconceivable that bare-bodied applications could be entertained and allotments made without any material to form any opinion as to the business or performance of the applicants or their potential or their eligibility under the stated norms. With particular reference to the petitioner in WP 37304(W) of 2013, the company says that nothing in the purported application of November 5, 2007 gave any information relevant for the purpose of assessing whether this petitioner qualified to obtain an allotment under the chairman's discretionary quota.
Indeed, the letter of intimation of February 1, 2011 required the petitioner "to kindly furnish a project report ... " The company suggests that if the "concept plan of the project" had not been submitted by this petitioner and no material evidencing the fulfillment of the eligibility criteria by this petitioner was furnished, there was nothing on which the chairman could have exercised his discretion to approve the allotment in this petitioner's favour. The company says that this petitioner's case is not an exception, but the general rule; in the sense that allotments of non-residential plots were approved by the chairman when there was no material on which any rational assessment could be made and there is no record of the chairman giving any iota of reasons in support of the approval of any allotment of plot in New Town.
103. The next in the line is WP 5158(W) of 2013, instituted by two companies and the persons in control thereof who had applied on December 26, 2007 to set up a financial hub in New Town. The application was accompanied by a concept plan which revealed the revolutionary business that the applicants intended to pursue in the office complex that they proposed to set up for trading in shares and securities, commodity trading, mutual funds services, insurance services and training in the financial sector. The applicants also intended "to provide office space" to other entities for conducting banking services, taxation and accountancy services and other advisory services. Such petitioners have relied on a document appearing to be dated February 28, 2011 where most of the names of the allottees are printed and the plot numbers are indicated in hand. The minister-chairman accorded the approval by apparently signing the document on February 28, 2011 whereupon a letter of intimation of the same date was issued by the company to the petitioners. The formal offer of allotment of the plot was made to these petitioners on May 7, 2011. As in most other allotments of non- residential plots in New Town, the petitioners were required to pay Rs.13.36 lakh per cottah for the allotment of the land on freehold basis. After the company took up a review of the allotments made under the previous management, the petitioners were requested to withdraw their application and obtain refund of the payments made by a letter dated September 14, 2011 before the allotment was finally cancelled on similar grounds as in a number of non-residential plots by a letter dated February 11, 2013. This case, along with the seven other allottees of non-residential plots evident from the document of approval of February 28, 2011 appearing at page 134 of the petition, conforms to the exact parameters of the final board decision of December 1, 2012 to cancel such allotments that were approved and intimated to the allottees on February 28, 2011.
104. The company has said in its affidavit that the application alleged to have been made by these petitioners is not available in the records of the company. The company has denied the rubber-stamp on the received copy of the application and the signature thereon. The more robust criticism of the approval of the allotment in these petitioners' favour by the erstwhile minister-chairman is that three allotments were made in favour of the members of one family which was contrary to the express stipulation in the guidelines that one person or one organisation could apply for only one plot. The company demonstrates that the petitioners in WP 5158(W) of 2013 and the petitioners in WP 2521(W) of 2014 and WP 13956(W) of 2014 are controlled by or belong to the same family. The company refers to the guidelines pertaining to allotment of non-residential plots under the chairman's discretionary quota and the restriction therein of allotment of more than one plot to the same person or organisation. The company says that if the chairman's discretion was exercised in such arbitrary and wanton manner by disregarding the relevant guidelines and the norms fixed, the allotments cannot be honoured as it would be opposed to public policy to do so.
105. None has appeared in support of WP 2531(W) of 2012 and it is submitted by advocate formerly appearing in support of such petition that the change of the political banner in the petitioner municipality may have resulted in the allotment not being pursued.
106. The next petitioners in WP 28365(W) of 2013 have contributed substantially to the jurisprudence in this court and the law on acquisition of sick jute mills pursuant to sanction granted by court that every student of company law would be aware of. Such petitioners, like several other allottees of non- residential plots in New Town before and after them, have access to photocopies of board meetings of the government company responsible for allotments and other records of such company. The petitioner company claims to have applied on January 12, 2011, which appears to have been received on January 17, 2011, for a 20-cottah plot in New Town for setting of its "Corporate Office-cum-R&D Centre." The petitioner company flaunted its running of the Victoria Jute Mills which was, according to it, "a sick industry which has been subsequently revived by us." It was but natural that with such credentials and the epoch-making proposal of setting up a corporate office and research centre, that the application was approved by the minister-chairman on February 1, 2011, which was communicated by the letter of intimation of February 21, 2011. The petitioners are silent on how the application made by them in January, 2011 that they have disclosed in the petition was approved with remarkable alacrity in less than a fortnight. Though the respondent authorities insinuate that the allotment was pursuant to the then Transport Minister's recommendation of January 19, 2011, as is evident from such minister's letter to the chairman of HIDCO, the petitioners refer to their original application of February 21, 2008 which is appended to the letter of recommendation. The offer of allotment of the land was made by the company on May 7, 2011 at the usual rate of Rs.13.364 lakh per cottah. The allotment was cancelled by a letter of July 26, 2013 on the same lines as of the lead petitioners extracted above.
107. The company suggests that it is unusual that an application is made in January, 2011, purportedly in pursuance of an application earlier made in the year 2008, but the subsequent application does not refer to the previous application. The company contends that neither application disclosed any material for the minister-chairman to assess whether the application or the applicant conformed to the eligibility criteria for the allotment of a non-residential plot under the chairman's discretionary quota.
108. The next lot of petitioners in WP 30170(W) of 2013 sought a plot of "around one acre", apparently for constructing a corporate office and residential complex for the senior personnel of the petitioner company. The petitioner company claims to have applied on December 27, 2007 and indicated the diverse range of its business from metal containers to mosquito repellants and its impressive turnover of Rs.686 crores in the year ended March 31, 2007. The application met with the approval of the chairman on February 1, 2011 and the same was intimated to the petitioner company on February 21, 2011. The 20-cottah plot was identified in the offer of allotment of May 7, 2011 on freehold basis under the chairman's discretionary quota at Rs.13.364 lakh per cottah. The allotment was cancelled by a letter of August 6, 2013 on similar grounds as indicated in the letter of cancellation issued to the lead petitioners extracted above. The only other point of note in this matter is that HIDCO has disclosed a letter dated February 25, 2008 in its opposition where the turnover of the petitioner company for the year ended March 31, 2010 has been disclosed. However, the petitioners say that the date on such application is written in hand, though they do not appear to be embarrassed by the managing director of the petitioner company addressing an undated letter to the chairman of HIDCO. Such petitioners also question the unsubstantiated allegation of fraud levelled against them in the company's affidavit.
109. The company contends that the copy of the application disclosed in the petition could not have been the one which was taken into consideration by the erstwhile chairman for according approval to the allotment. The copy of the application disclosed in the company's affidavit uses the words "once again" in the opening sentence and the company suggests that such words would indicate that it was the later application. Curiously, the business that the petitioners sought to set up at New Town at the proposed plot is not identical in the applications dated December 27, 2007 and February 25, 2008. In the alleged earlier application disclosed in the petition, the proposed use of the land was "for constructing a Corporate office and a residential complex for our senior personnel." In the application disclosed by the company, the petitioners sought the allotment "for constructing a Corporate office for our Packaging Division." Though such serious anomaly has been indicated in the company's affidavit, paragraph 16 (e) of the affidavit-in-reply implicitly acknowledges the copy of the application disclosed in the company's affidavit to be "subsequent reminders which were addressed on behalf of the petitioner company, but the receipt in respect of which were not acknowledged." The icing on the suspicious cake is the proposed use of the land as indicated in the letter of intimation of February 21, 2011: "construction of corporate office for Packaging Division."
110. It is, thus, apparent that the approval of the allotment in favour of this petitioner company was made on the basis of the application that carries the hand-written date of February 25, 2008 and which has been disclosed in the company's affidavit. The petitioners have accepted the application apparently dated February 25, 2008 to be theirs, but they only dispute the date ascribed to the document on the ground that it may have been inserted by hand to show them in poor light. Even if the hand-written date on such application as disclosed in the company's affidavit is disregarded, it would be evident from the reference to the turnover figures of the petitioner company of March 31, 2010 referred to therein, that such application could not have been made prior to some time in the middle of the year 2010. If the last date for receiving applications for allotment of non-residential plots was March 31, 2008, the application carrying a reference to March 31, 2010 could never have qualified for consideration. More importantly, the committee that met on April 28, 2008 to consider the applications for non-residential plots, could not have had an application referring to the figures as at March 31, 2010 before it. The anomaly is too glaring to ignore and throws considerable light on the manner in which allotments were approved by the minister-chairman under his discretionary quota.
111. The next set of petitioners in WP 4737(W) of 2014 insist that they have been needlessly clubbed with the allottees under the chairman's discretionary quota since these petitioners' allotment was made by the board of the company as was informed to the petitioner company by a letter of February 15, 2011. The allotment was of a 20-cottah plot for the petitioner company to establish a corporate office and training centre. Like the other allottees of commercial land in New Town, these petitioners say that the very setting-up of an office would generate employment and such consideration weighed with the board in the allotment being made in the petitioners' favour. Like several other allottees of non-residential plots, these petitioners question the cancellation of their allotment on the ground that the respondent authorities do not suggest that some applicants were arbitrarily chosen for allotments while others were rejected. These petitioners exhort that a golden opportunity to resuscitate the local economy would be lost to the State if the cancellation of their allotment is not set aside.
112. The company refers to the minutes of its board meeting held on October 22, 2011 and the discussion under item 13C of the business transacted thereat. The minutes reflect that a 20-cottah plot was allotted to the petitioner company in the central business district in New Town by a board resolution of January 24, 2011, but the minimum plot size in the CBD area was of two acre. The board resolved on October 22, 2011 to cancel the allotment since no offer of allotment had been issued to the petitioner company nor any payment received. The company submits that since no firm allotment of any plot was communicated to the petitioner company, the company was well within in its rights to correct an erroneous decision taken at a previous board meeting.
113. The petitioners in WP 3162(W) of 2014 had applied in the name of the petitioner company on March 4, 2008 to set up a real estate project on the expressway in Rajarhat for an "ultramodern commercial building complex of international city standards." The allotment was made in the petitioner company's favour under the chairman's discretionary quota on January 17, 2011 with the letter of intimation being issued on February 1, 2011. As in several other cases of allotment of non-residential plots, the letter of intimation issued to the petitioner company required a detailed project report to be submitted. The letter of intimation was delivered by hand and the project report was acknowledged to have been received by February 3, 2011. The offer of allotment on freehold basis at Rs.13.405 lakh per cottah was issued on May 10, 2011. The letter of cancellation was issued on December 6, 2013, which has been challenged on similar grounds as in several other matters, including the erroneous reference in the letter of cancellation to the date of approval of the allotment.
114. The company says that the petitioners are property dealers and did not furnish any information as to how the petitioner company was eligible to obtain an allotment under the chairman's discretionary quota. The company claims that the application disclosed in the petition is not available in the company's records and there is nothing in the copy of such application to suggest that it was deposited with or received by the company.
115. The next petition, WP 2565(W) of 2014, is by a company that owns a landmark mall on the Eastern Metropolitan Bypass off Salt Lake and which is part of a group that spins real estate projects under the appropriately sounding name of "Mani." The petition discloses an undated application for allotment of a two-acre plot in New Town and the purpose was for setting up a corporate office. Quite understandably and since the project promised to sub-serve the common good, it was approved by the chairman under his quota on February 26, 2011 and intimation thereof was issued on February 28, 2011. The offer of allotment on freehold basis at Rs.13.405 lakh per cottah was issued on May 12, 2011 for the 20-cottah plot. The notice of cancellation was issued on December 9, 2013 on similar lines as most of the previous cases of revocation of non-residential allotments. The one salient feature of this matter is that the refund offered by HIDCO of the amount that had been paid pursuant to the allotment, was promptly encashed by the petitioner company and it is claimed that such encashment was without prejudice to the rights of the petitioners to seek annulment of the cancellation of the allotment.
116. The company says that it has only a coloured photocopy of the application in its records. The company refers to the application to contend that the information therein was not sufficient for the erstwhile chairman to assess whether the applicant was eligible for an allotment under his discretionary quota. As in several other matters, the company contends that if the letter of intimation required the project report and the other details to be furnished, the exercise of the discretion by the chairman to approve the allotment, without reference to such material, had to be on irrelevant and extraneous considerations.
117. In WP 2521(W) of 2014, the trump-card is thrown at the first instance by referring to the board note pertaining to the minutes of the 61st board meeting of the company held on October 22, 2011. The petitioners say that the allotment made in their favour is not referred to in board note No.28 or in any of the charts appended thereto. They claim that their application of December 27, 2007 for a 20-cottah plot was to satisfy the burning need for a conference and banquet hall in New Town and it was in the best interests of developing the township that the remarkable concept plan was accorded approval by the chairman under his discretionary quota on February 24, 2011 which was intimated to the petitioner by the company's letter of February 28, 2011. These petitioners appear to be slightly disappointed with only a 15-cottah allotment being made in their favour. They claim to have made substantial payments upon receipt of the offer of allotment on freehold basis at Rs.13.405 lakh per cottah. They attack the generic letter of cancellation of November 27, 2013 for it betraying non-application of mind and being otherwise without basis.
118. The primary challenge by the company to the allotment made in favour of these petitioners is on the ground that a solitary family was favoured with the allotment of three non-residential plots by the erstwhile chairman in derogation of the norms set down in the relevant guidelines.
119. WP 3788(W) of 2014 was among the petitions taken up with the others but it was dismissed as not pressed on March 25, 2015.
120. WP 2523(W) of 2014 is similar to WP 2521(W) of 2014 in the name of the petitioning allottee not being reflected in the relevant board note pertaining to the minutes of the board meeting of the company held on October 22, 2011. The petitioners say that unless the allotment is revived, the one-of-a-kind showroom of steel products that the petitioners plan on their 15-cottah plot as a show-case to the world, would be lost to the city and the State. Apart from challenging the cancellation on the grounds already urged by others similarly placed, these petitioners refer to the confusion in the business transacted at the board meetings of the company, particularly the mix-up between the allotment of residential plots and non-residential plots at the 70th board meeting of the company. The petitioner company claims to have applied by a letter of August 12, 2010 for allotment of a non-residential plot in New Town "for showroom purpose". Even the nature of the showroom was not indicated in the application. The chairman approved the allotment in favour of the petitioner on February 17, 2011 and the letter of intimation was issued on February 25, 2011. The offer of allotment was issued by the company to the petitioners on May 12, 2011 for the 15-cottah plot on freehold basis at a price of Rs.13.405 lakh per cottah. The petitioners claim to have paid the money in full prior to October 22, 2011, but their allotment was cancelled by a notice of November 28, 2013 on identical grounds as in the case of the lead petition.
121. The company claims in its affidavit that though the petitioner company claims to have applied for a plot in 2010, the last date for receiving applications for allotment of non-residential plots under the chairman's discretionary quota was March 31, 2008. The company asserts that the petitioner company could not have applied within the time stipulated to obtain any allotment under the chairman's discretionary quota since the petitioner company was only incorporated on January 14, 2009. A copy of the relevant certificate of incorporation has been appended to the company's affidavit. The company submits that the charade that the company under its erstwhile chairman played out is epitomised by the approval accorded to this petitioner company.
122. The company has disclosed the minutes of the meeting of the committee set up to scrutinise the applications for allotment of non-residential plots in New Town. The minutes of the meeting of such committee held on April 28, 2008 referred to its consideration of 849 applications. The list of the 849 applications has also been disclosed. The list is in the form of a table that has six columns, including one for the date of the relevant application and another disclosing the purpose of use of the land. The name of the petitioner company appears against serial No.310 in the list. The purpose is recorded as "Showroom Purpose" and the date of the application is record as "25.02.2008". It appears from the list that the applications were arranged serially on the basis of the dates thereof. It would appear from the documents as disclosed by the company, with copies made available to these petitioners and other parties interested to obtain the same, that this petitioner company apparently made an application a year before its incorporation and the copy of the application disclosed in the petition may not have been the one on which the allotment was made.
123. The company suggests that if these petitioners are to be believed and their application of August 12, 2010 accepted at face value, it would imply that the minutes of the meeting of the scrutiny committee shown to have been held on April 28, 2008 may have been ante-dated for obvious reasons; for, an application that the applicant claims to have been made on August 12, 2010 could not have been considered by the committee on April 28, 2008.
124. The company suggests in the alternative that if the application had been made on the date of February 25, 2008 as attributed to it in the relevant list available in the company's records, it was an application by an entity that did not exist; and ought to have suffered summary rejection. The respondents submit that if such was the quality of evaluation of the applications, the approval granted by the chairman under his discretionary quota was improper and questionable.
125. The petitioner in WP 36986(W) of 2013 appears to have been clairvoyant. It applied under the chairman's quota on December 23, 2007 for setting up an economy hotel on a 10-cottah plot in New Town which it foresaw as being named Jyoti Basu Nagar though the former Chief Minister of the State died only in January, 2010. The allotment was approved on January 17, 2011 and the intimation issued on February 1, 2011. This petitioner suggests that since its offer of allotment was issued on April 21, 2011, it cannot be treated on a different footing than Balaji Enterprise in which case the approval was also accorded on January 17, 2011 and the offer of allotment was also made on April 21, 2011. The petitioner complains that for reasons which are not difficult to imagine, the deed of conveyance in favour of Balaji was executed on October 21, 2011, a day before the board meeting of the company of October 22, 2011, and the court should not accept the childish explanation proffered by the company that the transaction in Balaji's case was completed by lesser minions in the company before the decision to annul the allotments under the chairman's quota had been circulated. The petitioner challenges the grounds of cancellation in the relevant letter of November 27, 2013 as being baseless and unsustainable as the petitioner was not offered any opportunity to deal with the apprehension expressed therein. To the extent the notice of cancellation ascribes mala fides on the part of the petitioner, it says that no stigma could have been attached to its conduct without previous notice.
126. The company's affidavit refers to New Town being renamed after a former Chief Minister by a notification of September 27, 2010 published in the gazette on October 1, 2010. The company contends that the tell-tale suspicious rubber- stamp of the company appears on the received copy of the application dated December 31, 2007 disclosed in the petition. The company suggests that if the ante-dated application is seen to have been made in 2010, it would imply that the scrutiny committee could not have considered the application at its meeting of April 28, 2008. It may, thus, be inferred that the minutes of the meeting of the scrutiny committee were ante-dated and no real scrutiny or examination of the applications was undertaken by such committee in which three of the members were the officer on special duty to the chairman, the principal advisor to the chairman and the chief advisor to the chairman.
127. Though no submission has been made in support of WP 6011(W) of 2014, it appears from the petition that the petitioners had applied for setting up a "college for job oriented courses". Like several other applications for allotment of plots in New Town, the date is written in hand and the receipt issued by the company on February 29, 2008 bears the same rubber-stamp and initials as in several other matters. The letter of intimation was issued on February 1, 2011 for "setting up a college for IT and Management courses" upon the chairman's approval thereof on November 26, 2010. The offer of allotment was issued on May 12, 2011 for a 10-cottah plot at Rs.5.50 lakh per cottah on freehold basis under the chairman's discretionary quota. The allotment was cancelled by the company's letter of December 2, 2013 on similar lines as in most other cases of cancellation of non-residential allotments under the chairman's discretionary quota in New Town.
128. The petitioners in WP 36271(W) of 2013 suggest that spice is the flavour of life and the allotment of a 10-cottah plot for a Chinese restaurant in their favour could not have been cancelled, at least on the grounds indicated in the notice of November 22, 2013. These petitioners had applied on December 18, 2007 and their application was approved by the chairman on February 17, 2011. The letter of intimation was issued to them on February 25, 2011 and the offer of allotment identifying the plot was issued to them on May 7, 2011. The allotment was cancelled on similar grounds as many of the other allottees of non-residential plots.
129. The company refers to the copies of the two documents appended as annexures P-1 and P-2 to the petition. The first of the documents is dated January 29, 2007 in hand at two places after deleting the printed date of "15.12.2006". In such letter addressed to a general manager of the company, the petitioner claimed to have applied "for setting up a 16,000 sq. ft. hotel cum restaurant" and requested the company "to kindly consider the same afresh and inform me of your decision." That would imply that even before advertisements were issued by the company on October 12, 2007 inviting applications for allotment of non-residential plots in New Town, this petitioner had applied therefor and had also issued a reminder in such regard. The letter dated January 29, 2007 could not have been issued in pursuance of the more formal application for allotment that is said to have been made on December 18, 2007 that appears as annexure P-2 to the petition.
130. The next petitioner in WP 4574(W) of 2012 applied as a land-loser for allotment of a non-residential plot "for my proposed commercial project at New Town to take care of the loss I had to face" upon the State acquiring the petitioner's ancestral land. The petitioner intended to set up a budget hotel. Following his application of January 3, 2008 (the date is written in hand), the chairman appears to have approved the allotment under his discretionary quota on February 27, 2011 and the letter of intimation was issued to the petitioner on February 28, 2011. The company has appended a copy of a document dated February 24, 2011 wherein the names of five allottees are printed and the non- residential plots allotted to such applicants are indicated in hand. The document appears to carry the signature of the minister-chairman. As noticed earlier in a similar document evidencing the chairman's approval of the applications recorded therein, there is no reason indicated in support of the approval. The allotment made in favour of this petitioner has not been formally cancelled since he instituted this quia timet action in March, 2012 and obtained an order therein on May 16, 2012 that the action taken by the respondents would abide by the result of the petition; which was improved upon on an interlocutory application on March 7, 2013 by directing status quo as regards the possession of the petitioner to be maintained until further orders. Though it is the undisputed position that the possession of any plot has not been made over to the petitioner since even the offer of allotment identifying the plot has not been issued to him, in deference to the order passed by this court, no further steps have been taken by the company. The company, however, asserts that since no letter of allotment was issued to this petitioner, no formal cancellation of the allotment is necessary; and, the letter of intimation may not be required to be withdrawn since the company does not intend to allot any plot to this petitioner. The petitioner insists that since he has been informed that the allotment in his favour has been approved and it cannot be doubted that another budget hotel is necessary in New Town, the company should be directed to issue the formal letter of allotment, execute the necessary documents in respect thereof and make over possession of the allotted plot to him.
131. The company has referred to a representation made by the petitioner on April 16, 2011, seeking to have the price reduced on the ground that he was a retired school teacher and his son was unemployed and it was "impossible for us to make this payment" of Rs.13.36 lakh per cottah. The company contrasts such assertion with the declaration as to the petitioner's occupation in his application said to have been made on January 3, 2008 where he claimed to be "Hotelier, Partner of a 50 saleable roomed comfortable budget hotel at Tarapith ... with swimming pool facility" and partner of a group of promoters engaged in the construction of multistoried apartments. More importantly, the company refers to paragraph 2 (v) of its affidavit in the matter where the company has claimed that the company is in possession of the details of the petitioner as disclosed in his income-tax permanent account number (PAN) card. The company says that since the petitioner's date of birth in the PAN card is stated to be September 15, 1946 and his age was disclosed as 64 in his application which is said to be dated January 3, 2008, it would be evident that the application was made in the year 2010 or later and a false date of January 3, 2008 has been hand-written thereon.
132. The petitioner in the next matter, WP 6440(W) of 2014, claims to have applied on February 28, 2008 for the allotment of a 10-cottah non-residential plot to set up a Montessori and meditation school at a cost of Rs. 6 crore. The application promised that the applicant would "provide 15% reservation for the children of the families of land losers at Rajarhat & children of poor people of the locality below the power (sic, poverty) line and will also provide direct employment to persons which are further proposed to be recruited amongst the family of land losers at Rajarhat ..." Such noble project must have conjured visions of ill-clad toddlers sharing their expensive tiffin with their mates in the proposed school as it prompted the chairman to approve the allotment on December 7, 2010 with the letter of intimation being issued by the company to the petitioner on February 1, 2011. No further communication was addressed by the company to the petitioner thereafter and, following the petitioner's query under the Right to Information Act, 2005, the company responded on April 10, 2012 that the "Chairman's Quota in WBHIDCO Ltd. has been abolished." A further query of the petitioner resulted in the company informing the petitioner on November 18, 2012 that the process of cancellation of allotments under the chairman's quota was continuing and had not been completed. This petitioner seeks to rely on the perceived anomalies in the board note pertaining to the 61st meeting of the board of directors of the company. The petitioner claims that the allotment of residential plots in favour of Nasiruddin Syed, Shuvanan Ray, Abhilasha Cooperative Housing Society, Five Star Housing Cooperative Housing Society Limited, Rajeev Kumar and Dipak Kumar Bhattacharya, among others, ought to have been cancelled since the letters of allotment in each case was issued subsequent to February 28, 2011. The petitioner demonstrates from the documents disclosed by the company that possession of the plot was made over to each of such allottees notwithstanding that similar allotments under the chairman's quota had been cancelled. In Rajeev Kumar's case, the status of the allotment indicated in the company's supplementary affidavit is seriously criticised as the petitioner perceives it to be a crass act of favoritism in favour of such allottee since his allotment is alleged by the company to be under reconsideration despite it being cancelled.
133. Apart from the company questioning the approval of the allotment in the petitioner's favour on the ground that the application did not furnish any material to demonstrate that the petitioner was eligible to obtain a plot under the chairman's discretionary quota, the company shows the suspicious rubber- stamp with the identical scribbled initials thereon. The company, however, says that though the company informed this petitioner following a query under the Right to Information Act, that "no records are maintained about unsuccessful applicants i.e. who applied for Chairman's Quota but did not get any allotment", there is the list containing some details of the several other applicants for non- residential plots in New Town that the scrutiny committee apparently examined on April 28, 2008. But the company submits that the applications and other records pertaining to the unsuccessful applicants under the chairman's discretionary quota are not available in its records.
134. The petitioners in WP 21411(W) of 2013 are a charitable trust and its trustees. They applied to the chairman on June 22, 2009 for a two-acre plot to set up a multipurpose care centre in New Town which would include an old-age home, cater to the disabled and provide coaching facilities for children of poor parents. Following the application, the company requested the trust on October 31, 2009 to submit a project report. The trust responded by its letter of November 9, 2009 by which it apparently submitted its project report, though such report does not accompany the copy of the letter appended as annexure P-4 to the petition. What is of significance is that even before the project report had been submitted, the representatives of the trust had been shown a plot in New Town which they confirmed would suffice for their purpose. The decision to allot a 1.15-acre plot to the petitioners was taken at the 51st meeting of the board of directors of the company held on January 15, 2010. Copies of the relevant pages of the minutes of such board meeting have been appended to the petition. The company informed the petitioners on May 10, 2010 that it had approved in principle to allot a plot of land in favour of the trust. At the 55th meeting of the board of directors of the company held on October 8, 2010, it was recorded that though an allotment of a plot outside the periphery canal had been made to these petitioners "for its noble objects at a price of Rs.1.30 lakhs per Cottah ... the allottee had to face lots of problems and there was no easy solution for taking possession of the plots." In such light, the board recorded that an alternative plot of about one acre had been identified and the board approved the allotment of such alternative plot after cancellation of the previous plot "on leasehold basis at a price of 50 % of the break-even cost of Rs.2.75 lakhs" to the trust. The offer of allotment was issued by the company to the petitioners on November 22, 2010, identifying the one-acre plot allotted on leasehold basis for a period of 99 years "for construction of a Residential Campus for carrying out various social welfare activities" at a price of Rs.1,37,500 per cottah. After the reconstitution of the board of directors of the company in 2011, the matter pertaining to the allotment to the petitioners was discussed at the board meeting of the company held on October 22, 2011, where the board noted that the trust had requested for change of the status from leasehold to freehold. The board resolved to refer the issue to the State government and authorised its new chairman and managing director to take appropriate steps in such regard. The allotment was cancelled by a notice of February 28, 2013 on the principal ground that it was "vitiated by favouritism, unfairness and prejudicial to the interest of WBHIDCO and contrary to public interest." The letter also asserted that the allotment on leasehold basis at a price of Rs.1,37,500/- "was unconscionable, shockingly low ... " The trust's failure to pay the balance amount was also cited in support of the cancellation of the allotment. The petitioners lament that a benevolent project has been dumped by the company on unfounded suspicions and conjectures without affording even a post-decisional hearing to the petitioners.
135. The company has carried the original records available with it pertaining to this matter and all the other petitions. The company suggests that the principal trustee of the trust enjoyed considerable clout under the previous dispensation as would be evident from some of the documents appended to the petition and the file noting in its records. It appears from the petitioners' letter dated May 4, 2010 issued to the managing director of the company that the petitioners were aware of the identity of the plot that would be allotted to them. By a letter of May 10, 2010, the company informed the petitioners that it had agreed in principle to allot a plot of land to the trust. Though the land was not identified even in such letter, the petitioners were aware thereof even before this letter was issued to them. The company says that the petitioners and the principal trustee did not intend to use the plot for setting up any philanthropic project as would appear from the letters dated November 24, 2010, November 27, 2010, December 8, 2010 and December 24, 2010 issued by the trust to the company, copies whereof have been disclosed in the petition. The first of such letters called upon the company to alter the status of the holding from a 99-year lease to freehold or a 999-year lease. It is apparent from the letter of November 24, 2010 that the principal trustee, who was also the settlor of the trust, had liberal access to the chairman and to the managing director of the company. He demanded that the proposed use of the land should be converted to residential and that permissive possession be given "to employ the Developer and start build up formalities." His next letter sought permission to mortgage the land. The following letter repeated the request for permissive possession and the letter of December 24, 2010 dictated that the lease document "should allow transfer by way of sale/under lease to third parties" of the "residential complex and/or units built thereon together with proportionate share in the leased land ... without further approval and/ or sanction from WBHIDCO". The letter also disclosed that the trust "has decided to enter into an arrangement with AMP Universal Realty Private Limited"
and sought "a formal no objection certificate ... for development of the Project."
136. The company shows from the note-sheet appended to the relevant file (which has been permitted to be perused by Advocate for the petitioners), the following noting of December 29, 2010:
"A letter received from R.L. Muni Chakravarty dtd. 24/12/2010 recd. today placed hereunder may pl. be seen (F/1). Discussed with M.D. As advised permissive possession may be given now. The other points as referred in the said letter may be sent to the next Board for decision.
"Letter as in draft may be signed if approved."
137. The company places its letter of January 5, 2011 by which permissive possession of the land was allowed even without the reduced consideration being tendered. The company submits that the allotment of the plot in these petitioners' favour was at an unconscionably low price and it is evident that the petitioners were treated as favoured applicants and their every demand was attended to with an indecorous promptitude that is unbecoming of a government organisation.
138. The next lot of rejected allottees in WP 3132(W) of 2012 intended to set up a budget hotel and a commercial centre at the 20-cottah plot allotted to them under the chairman's discretionary quota. The petitioner company applied on December 31, 2007 (again, the date is written in hand), introducing itself as a company engaged in "various civil engineering works like bridges, roads & buildings etc. with a turnover of Rs.112.33 crore per annum." It informed the chairman in the application that it was "scheduling to spread out our business activities in other sectors like to setting up the 'Budget Hotels Chains' in various cities." The credentials of the applicants and the proposal were too attractive to reject and the chairman approved an allotment on January 17, 2011 which was intimated by the company to the applicant on February 1, 2011. The letter of allotment was issued on May 12, 2011. The impugned cancellation was by a notice of December 1, 2012. Such notice is different from the similar notices issued to cancel several of the other non-residential allotments. The notice in this case curtly informed the allottee that the chairman's decision of January 17, 2011 "has since been reviewed in the context of the extant policy of the State Govt. by the Board of Directors in the Meeting dated 22/10/11 ... (and) ... the Competent Authority has approved cancellation of the instant offer." The petitioners criticise the notice and the decision reflected therein by asserting that no policy was disclosed in the relevant letter and it was not indicated how the allotment in favour of the petitioners was contrary to public policy. The petitioners point out that the decision to cancel their allotment cannot be sustained in the backdrop of the arbitrariness with which the company has selectively chosen some allottees for proceeding against them while the decisions of the new board reflect that discretionary allotment of plots in New Town continues.
139. The company places paragraph 4 of the petition where the petitioners consciously avoided mentioning the date of the application. The company says that its records pertaining to this matter contain an application which bears the hand-written date of "31.12.07". By a letter dated January 7, 2013, Advocate for the company called upon Advocate for the petitioners to forward a copy of the application made by the petitioner company along with the proof of the receipt thereof. Inspection of the relevant document was also sought. Though the letter was duly received on behalf of the petitioners on the same day, no copy of the application was forwarded nor any inspection offered. In the application in the records of the company bearing the hand-written date of December 31, 2007, the name of the petitioner company is disclosed as "Rajpath Contractors & Engineers Ltd." and there is a reference to its turnover being Rs.112.33 crore per annum. The company has relied on a second certificate of incorporation issued by the registrar of companies on July 21, 2008 that the word "Private" was deleted from the name of the company with effect from July 14, 1998. The company has appended the project report apparently filed by the petitioner company with its balance-sheet as at March 31, 2010. The annual turnover of the company as indicated in the project report is Rs.112.33 crore in the financial year 2009-10. The company maintains that the hand-written date on the application is fictitious and the fact that such document is in the file of the company would demonstrate the complicity of the petitioners with the erstwhile chairman to whom the application was addressed. The company says that the petitioner company could not have applied prior to April 20, 2011 for allotment of any plot for undertaking any hotel business since its memorandum of association was only amended on April 20, 2011 to include hotel business. The anomalies as highlighted in the company's affidavit have been side-stepped in the petitioners' reply. The company says that since it is evident that the application in this case had not been made prior to September 2, 2010, since the annual accounts of the petitioner company for year 2009-10 were signed on such date, it is plain to see that there was no examination of the application by the scrutiny committee and the purported minutes of the scrutiny committee of April 28, 2008 ought to be disregarded.
140. The petitioners in WP 7746(W) of 2012 are not represented to pursue their challenge to the cancellation of the allotment of a non-residential plot in their favour by a letter of March 28, 2012. The petitioner company in this case is a Government of India undertaking. The company, however, submits that Hindustan Steel Works Construction Ltd has accepted the refund offered by the company and has issued a letter dated June 30, 2014 to the company that it would not proceed with this petition. A copy of the relevant letter, as made over to the court by the company, should be retained with the records of this petition.
141. The petitioners in WP 7752(W) of 2012 are two companies and their promoters. These petitioners seek to defend the allotment of a one-acre plot in their favour made by the board of directors of the company for setting up a multi- specialty pediatric hospital. The petitioners applied in 2005 to the Health and Family Welfare Department of the State for setting up such facility. The department forwarded the application to the Kolkata Municipal Corporation. The petitioners applied on September 30, 2010 to the company which met with the board's approval at the 59th meeting of the directors of the company on February 28, 2011. As noted earlier, eight proposals for setting up medical facilities in New Town received by the board of directors of the company were referred to a committee at such meeting. The committee approved all the proposals at its meeting held at 6 pm on February 28, 2011 which was incorporated in the minutes of the meeting of the board of directors of the company which commenced at 12 noon of the same day and the board's approval recorded. The application was made by a SAF Fermion Ltd and shortly upon such company being intimated on March 1, 2011 of the allotment, it requested the allotment to be made in favour of Kidz Healthcare Private Ltd by a letter of March 14, 2011 which was approved by the company, without it being apparently referred to the board, as would be evident from the offer of allotment of the one-acre plot on freehold basis at Rs.4.15 lakh per cottah in the company's letter of April 9, 2011. Curiously, no request was made by Kidz Healthcare Private Ltd for the change of name of the allottee, though the petitioners suggest that the promoters of the two companies are substantially the same and it was Kidz Healthcare which had applied for the allotment on September 30, 2010. The company requested the allottee, by a letter of September 14, 2011, to withdraw the application on the ground that the allotment had been made when the model code of conduct had come into operation. The cancellation of the allotment was effected by the company's letter of March 20, 2012 on the same grounds as cited in several other cases including in the lead matter with the additional ground that no board resolution of the company had been passed to allot any plot to Kidz Healthcare Private Ltd. The petitioners contend that though the relevant company was incorporated in the year 2006 and the proposed hospital in New Town would be such company's maiden venture, the credentials of its promoters and the experience of the persons associated with the allottee should have encouraged the company to allow the project.
142. The company says that these petitioners must have been regarded as special by the previous management of the company since the company secretary, no less, personally received the letter issued by the petitioners for changing the name of the allottee on March 14, 2011. The company also expresses surprise in the note-sheet appended to the company's file pertaining to this matter recording that Kidz Healthcare is a fully-owned subsidiary of SAF Fermion, though the original allottee's letter of March 11, 2011 to the company referred to Kidz Healthcare being a "sister concern" of SAF Fermion Ltd.
143. Though no submission has been made in support of WP 3171(W) of 2012, it is evident from the petition that the petitioner applied on December 31, 2007 for allotment of a commercial plot to set up a gallery for sports trophies and corporate awards. The petitioner has relied on a copy of the notice dated October 11, 2007 issued by the company along with the guidelines for allotment of non- residential plots under the chairman's discretionary quota. The petitioner has also relied on a subsequent notice of February 27, 2008 by which the time to apply for plots under the chairman's discretionary quota was extended till the end of March, 2008. Though the application was made by an entity described as "International Trophies & Co.", the letter of intimation was issued in the name of "Awards International" on February 1, 2011 following the chairman's approval of the allotment on November 22, 2010 for "trading and gallery purposes of sports trophies and corporate awards." The tentative allotment was cancelled on December 13, 2011 on the basis of "a policy decision" taken by the board of directors of the company on October 22, 2011. The notice of cancellation also asserted that no formal application or payment had been received for the allotment.
144. The case of the petitioners in WP 22170(W) of 2012 appears to stand on a different footing than the others. A 10-cottah plot was allotted under the chairman's quota to the petitioner company for an office building with a community-business centre or an office and retail centre with food courts and restaurants. The application of December 26, 2007, which the petitioners were shy to disclose in the petition, has been revealed by the company in its affidavit. The short application and the purposed use of the land as indicated in the accompanying documents should be seen in the applicants' words:
"It has come to our attention that non-residential plots are being allotted through HIDCO under the Chairman's discretionary quota.
On this basis we would like to apply for a commercial plot in the Central Business District (CBD) area of Rajarhat. The Allotment is to be made in the name of our proposed company Dreamland Infrabuild Private Limited.
We would request for the plot to be a corner plot between 5-20 Cottahs on the main road with F.A.R. of at least 2.5 preferably in Action Area I with good shape & frontage, so as to make it a viable and successful project.
Awaiting to get a positive response from you. ..."
"We have certain projects in mind that we think might be viable in the Rajarhat area. They are as follows:
1) Office Building with a Community-Business centre/Business Club:
A building with commercial office space and a business:
community centre for local businessmen to hold conferences, meeting and events.
or
2) Office & Retail Centre with Food Court/Restaurants:
A office and retain centre with a varied office and retain shops and food shops, including an entertainment centre with games for children."
Small mercy that the applicants did not seek the plot to be in the courtyard of the Governor House. The revolutionary application for the valued project met with the chairman's approval and the company intimated the petitioner company by its letter of September 9, 2010 that a 10-cottah plot had been allotted to it under the chairman's discretionary quota. Though the application of December 26, 2007 gave the impression that Dreamland Infrabuild Private Limited had not been incorporated, yet HIDCO did not think that such minor matter was of any relevance. The offer of allotment was made on November 30, 2010 at Rs. 9.50 lakh per cottah and the petitioners complain of, not the cancellation for the allotment, but of the company now requiring the freehold allotment to be converted to a leasehold allotment for an unspecified period by the company's letter of August 27, 2012.
145. In the company's affidavit in this matter, it has disclosed the application said to have been made by the petitioners on December 26, 2007. The application, in which the date is written in hand, is signed by two persons claiming to be the directors of the petitioner company. The company claims that the petitioner company was incorporated only on July 12, 2008 and, as such, no application could have been made by the company within the stipulated time till March 31, 2008 for being allotted a non-residential plot in New Town under the chairman's discretionary quota. The company asserts that since the petitioner company was incorporated on July 12, 2008 and its application could only have been made thereafter, it is evident that the scrutiny committee could not have considered the application at its meeting of April 28, 2008. The company says that it intends to cancel this allotment altogether and maintains that this allotment would demonstrate that the records of the company under the previous management may have been fabricated to show a meeting of the concerned committee to have been held even before this petitioner company had been incorporated or could have applied for a plot in New Town.
146. The next petition, WP 24721(W) of 2012, is also slightly different in the sense that following the application by the petitioner company, a 20-cottah non- residential plot was allotted to the petitioner company, but no formal letter of allotment has been issued and, consequently, no formal cancellation of allotment has been made. The copy of the application dated March 25, 2008 relied upon by the petitioners reveals that the petitioners intended to set up a research and development centre for the development of new varieties of seeds, including herbal, medicinal and aromatic plants. The chairman approved the allotment under his discretionary quota on December 7, 2010 and only a letter of intimation of February 1, 2011 has been issued to the petitioner company. HIDCO says that since no formal allotment of any plot was made to the relevant applicant, there may not be any need to issue any letter of cancellation, though the letter of intimation may be required to be withdrawn.
147. The petitioners in WP 9162(W) of 2014 claim to have lost the copy of the application made by them on February 29, 2008. The petitioner company was allotted a five-cottah non-residential plot for the construction of an office, including a guest-house, where its members from all over the State could stay when visiting the city. The approval was granted by the chairman under his discretionary quota on February 26, 2011 and the letter of intimation was issued on February 28, 2011. The letter of allotment was issued on May 12, 2011 at Rs.13.364 lakh per cottah. The allotment was cancelled by a letter of February 5, 2014 on similar grounds as indicated in several other letters of cancellation noticed above. The only other feature of this petition is that the petitioners have appended a list of the allottees of plots in New Town under the chairman's discretionary quota with effect from December 1, 2010. The petitioners complain that there are several anomalies in the list as disclosed by the company pursuant to a query under the Right to Information Act and the incomplete list appended to the supplementary affidavit of the company. The company contends that apart from the general irregularity involved in the allotment of the plot to these petitioners, the cancellation of the allotment was also on the ground that even the earnest money was not deposited within the 30-day period and the same was sought to be deposited much later on September 16, 2011.
148. The petitioner in WP 1992(W) of 2014 is not represented to make any submission. A five-cottah plot was allotted to this petitioner for setting up a Montessori school with an Abacus training centre and a centre to provide training for higher education. The allotment was approved on November 26, 2010 and the letter of intimation was issued to the petitioner on February 1, 2011. The offer of allotment of May 12, 2011 indicated the price of Rs.4.125 lakh per cottah. The letter of cancellation of November 27, 2013 is on almost identical lines as in the case of the lead petitioners.
149. The company says that as in many other files pertaining to the allottees of plots in New Town under the chairman's discretionary quota, the original application that may have been filed by this petitioner is not available in the company's records. The company submits that that most of the applicants who obtained allotments under the chairman's discretionary quota have relied on letters which bear hand-written dates and the original applications are not available in the relevant file with the company. In this petitioner's case, the company says that she has relied on the copy of the letter of intimation that was forwarded to the officer on special duty to the chairman as would be evident from annexure P-2 to the petition. The company says that one original and three copies of every letter of intimation was prepared by the company. The original was issued to the applicant to communicate the tentative allotment of a plot on the basis of the chairman's approval thereof; and the three copies would be sent to the chief finance officer and to the secretaries or the like of the chairman and the managing director of the company. According to the company, the original letter of intimation issued to an applicant would carry a date at the top, but the copies forwarded internally to personnel in the company would just carry the dates under the signature of the joint managing director. In this case, the copy of the letter of intimation relied upon by the petitioner is in arguably a photocopy of such document as forwarded to the office of the chairman as would appear from the appropriate tick against the designation of the second addressee to whom a copy of the document was forwarded. Strangely, complains the company, the copy of the same document in its records is also the document marked to the chairman's office. The company suggests that the petitioner may have misplaced or not received the original document and obtained a copy thereof from the chairman's office, without disclosing any communication in such regard, to append the same to the petition. The company insinuates that the nexus between the petitioner and the erstwhile chairman is too obvious to ignore and that would also explain the approval by the chairman of a sketchy application which furnished no particulars for any meaningful assessment to be made as to whether the application conformed to the guidelines to earn an allotment under the chairman's discretionary quota. The company also points out the dubious rubber-stamp on the received copy of the application relied on in the petition.
150. The persons interested in the project covered by WP 8059(W) of 2012 are residents of Junglighat in Port Blair. They applied to the company for a plot to be allotted for setting up a cooperative housing complex for residential and commercial purpose. The petitioners rely on an undated application addressed to the managing director of HIDCO on behalf of a cooperative society that had not been formed then. The proposal was for building a housing complex on 60,000 sq. ft of land to accommodate 125 families in G+4 structures. To be fair to the petitioners, their application did not refer to the petitioners being seriously affected by the Tsunami of 2004. However, the letter of intimation issued by the company on September 28, 2007 regarded the application to have been made by "Tsunami affected people." The company allotted 1.25 acre of land to the petitioners at Rs.2.50 lakh per cottah by a letter of December 11, 2007 "for construction of housing for Tsunami affected people ..." The allotment was cancelled by a letter of January 11, 2012, but the petitioners complain that the grounds therein do injustice to the petitioners since the petitioners had not held themselves out as victims of the 2004 Tsunami who were in need of a shelter in the mainland. The petitioners also say that much ado about nothing has been made in the principal person who set up the cooperative society being understandably unavailable at his Bondel Road address since such address was necessary for the purpose of registration of the society in the State and the relevant person is ordinarily a resident of Port Blair.
151. The company admits that Sanjay Chowdhury may ordinarily be a resident of Port Blair, but adds that his place of residence in Port Blair was, for a substantial period of time and may still be, the jail near Port Blair. The company refers to its affidavit-in-opposition and a letter dated November 16, 2011 issued by the anti-corruption wing of the Andaman & Nicobar Police. A deputy superintendent addressed the said letter to the company enquiring whether any land had been allotted by the company or the State in Rajarhat for providing shelter to some permanent residents of the islands or in the name of the petitioner society. The company places a list of the members of the housing society, which includes the names of several lawyers and others who subsequently forwarded sworn affidavits to the company to the effect that neither they nor any dependent or other relative had applied to purchase any land or dwelling unit from the company. The original affidavits have been produced in court. The company places a letter dated October 10, 2011 issued by one of the persons shown to be a member of the society. The letter expresses surprise at the company allotting a huge plot of land without verifying the credentials of Sanjay Chowdhury or the organisation that he sought to represent. According to the letter, Chowdhury invited applications for membership of the housing cooperative society by publishing advertisements in The Daily Telegram newspaper published by the Administration in Port Blair. The company says that many gullible persons in the islands have complained of being duped by Sanjay Chowdhury into parting with their money for the housing project.
152. The cancellation of the allotment of a non-residential plot to the petitioner in WP 7084(W) of 2012 has not been effected since such petition was one of the earliest and there is an order restraining third party interest being created in respect of the plot. The petitioner applied on March 28, 2008 for setting up "a State of the art R&D centre ... which shall fulfill every criteria of yours so as to make the Township a place immortal." Possibly because of the poetic brilliance of the application, a 15-cottah non-residential plot was approved by the chairman under his discretionary quota on February 28, 2011 and the company communicated such decision to the petitioner company on the same day. The offer of allotment was made on May 7, 2011 on freehold basis at Rs.5.50 lakh per cottah. The petition was filed on March 29, 2012 and an initial order was made on April 12, 2012 that no third party interest be created in respect of the relevant plot. The interim order may have expired, but the allotment has not been cancelled in deference to the matter being in court. However, as in some of the other cases, a notice was issued by the company to the allottee on September 14, 2011 requesting the allottee "to exercise an option to withdraw" the application made for the allotment of the plot. It was the company's refusal to accept the balance consideration for the land that prompted the institution of the petition.
153. The petitioners in WP 2395(W) of 2014 sermonise that HIDCO being an extension of the State, it has to act in a fair and reasonable manner and not be unduly suspicious of allotments made prior to the change of government or be vindictive against the allottees on the imaginary perception of any extraneous consideration having passed between the allottees and the erstwhile board or chairman of the company. The reason for the sermon is that the petitioners do not have any application to show that may have been made within the time provided by the advertisements issued in Ganashakti and The Echo of India for applications for non-residential plots in New Town under the chairman's discretionary quota. The petitioner company wrote identical letters on November 9, 2010 to both the managing director of HIDCO and its chairman, seeking a one-acre piece of land "for our commercial and ancillary services." It may have been the quality of the application, particularly the eulogy in the first sentence at the success of project Rajarhat and the reference to a futuristic and resurgent West Bengal in the last sentence that impelled the chairman to disregard the niceties as to the time for making an application and accord approval for a 20- cottah plot on February 24, 2011. The company intimated the applicant of the chairman's decision on February 28, 2011. The letter of allotment was issued on May 2, 2011 for freehold land at Rs.13.364 lakh per cottah. The allotment was cancelled on December 9, 2013 by citing the model code of conduct and the other reasons of impropriety as mentioned in similar letters of cancellation of non- residential allotments. The petitioners complain that the company has not disclosed its records and insinuate that the company has kept the records up its sleeve to conceal the real intention behind its apparent drive to cleanse the system. However, the petitioners have not called upon the company to produce any specific records.
154. The company has carried its file pertaining to this petition at the hearing and the entire records have been offered to the petitioners for inspection in court. The company refers to paragraph 5 of the petition where it has been pleaded that the petitioners were impressed with the infrastructure set up in Rajarhat and "by letters dated 9th November, 2010, your petitioner no.1 ... made an offer to the Managing Director and Chairman respectively of the respondent no.2 to allot a piece of land in the New Town ... to the petitioner No.1." In response to such assertion, the company pointed out at paragraph 5 (d) of its affidavit that the petitioners' application was made beyond the permitted time and could not have been considered for any allotment of land being made. The company has also disclosed at paragraph 8 of its affidavit that it had no application dated November 9, 2010 in its relevant file, though there was another similar application bearing a different date. It is alleged in the company's affidavit that the date on the petitioners' application as available in the company's records "is obviously antedated and contains the date written in hand." The petitioners' affidavit-in-reply deals with the statements contained in paragraph 5 (a) to 5 (i) of the affidavit-in-opposition at paragraph 8 thereof spread over pages 10 to 22 thereof, but fails to deal with the relevant allegation as to the existence of an ante-dated application in the company's records.
155. The company submits that the stand taken by the petitioners would leave no room for doubt that they did not make any application earlier than the one said to have been made on November 9, 2010 for allotment of a non-residential plot in New Town. The company asserts that if the petitioners do not say that they had applied earlier than November, 2010 for the allotment despite the seemingly earlier application and its existence being alluded to in the company's affidavit, it is baffling that the list appended to the minutes of the meeting of the screening committee said to have been held on April 28, 2008 ascribes a date of February 28, 2008 to the application of these petitioners. The company maintains that since, on the petitioners' showing, their application was made in November, 2010, such application could not have been considered by the screening committee which met for the last time on April 24, 2008. The company says that the inescapable inference is that the screening committee did not meet at all and its minutes have been ante-dated and a list containing fictitious details as to the applications has been referred to in such minutes. The company submits that if there was no scrutiny of the applications for non-residential plots and there is intrinsic evidence to show that some of such applications could not have been made prior to March or April, 2011, the purported approval of such allotments and the purported letters of intimation have to be regarded as fabricated. The company says that even if one application approved by the chairman under his discretionary quota is shown to be ante-dated, the veracity of the other approvals granted by the chairman would be open to question and none of the petitioners can be permitted to retain the ill-gotten allotments.
156. Deep into the hearing, the petitioners in WP 21310(W) of 2011, possibly the first of the petitions pertaining to the cancellation of allotments under the chairman's quota in New Town, attempted to drop a bombshell by disclosing The New Town Kolkata (Building) Rules, 2014 as published in The Kolkata Gazette on March 4, 2014. They refer, in particular, to Rule 24(2) of the said Rules that provides for the "mixing of the other uses or occupancies with the joint principal use(s) or occupancy" on the basis of a table set out thereunder. The table permits 25% of the total covered area on all floors to be used for purposes other than residential accommodation though mercantile, storage, industrial and hazardous uses are prohibited. The petitioners applied on March 31, 2008 for setting up a hub "for use by finance professionals/students and entities rendering specialized financial services." The allotment was approved in principle by the chairman under his quota on February 28, 2011 for a 15-cottah plot and it was intimated to the petitioner company on the same day. The offer of allotment was issued on May 12, 2011 for freehold land at Rs.13.364 lakh per cottah. The company requested the allottee to withdraw the application by its letter of September 14, 2011. Upon the allottee's refusal to withdraw the application, the allotment was cancelled by a letter of October 26, 2011 on the ground that the payment in terms of the letter of allotment had not been made and the board of directors of the company had decided, at its meeting of August 19, 2011, to cancel the allotment. The petitioners complain that in the said Rules of 2014 being framed, it would be evident that the company had attempted to expedite the progress of the other projects on land allotted under the chairman's quota that had not been cancelled. The petitioners maintain that in at least one the allottees of non- residential land being required to change the status of the allotment from freehold to leasehold, it is evident that the company endorses some of the allotments made under the erstwhile chairman's discretionary quota. The petitioners point out that all the allotments made by the board of the company have not been disclosed despite an order in such regard. They submit that the arbitrariness with which the allotments made under the chairman's discretionary quota is being tainted would have been relevant if any person who had applied thereunder had complained of the arbitrary rejection of his application.
157. The company submits that the records pertaining to this petition epitomise the gigantic scam that was the allotment of plots in New Town under the chairman's discretionary quota. The company says that the application dated March 31, 2008 relied upon by the petitioners is a fictitious and bogus document and, despite the attempt at hedging in the opening line thereof, the falsity of the case would be apparent from the fact that the petitioner company was incorporated only on March 14, 2011 as would be evident from a copy of its certificate of incorporation appended as annexure R-5 to the supplementary affidavit affirmed on behalf of the company on July 12, 2012. It may be necessary to make an old-fashioned reference to the pleadings in such context. At paragraph 6(v) of the company's supplementary opposition, it has been stated that a copy of the certificate of incorporation of the petitioner company was available in the records of the company. The anomaly is dealt with at paragraph 7(iii) of the petitioners' reply that "while cancelling the allotment of the plot of land the respondent No. 1 has not contended any reason in relation to the non- registration of the company as on the date of application and therefore have waived its right to create new reasons ..." Later on, in the same sub-paragraph, the petitioners say that the deponent of the affidavit-in-reply "used to run the petitioner No. 1 as a partnership firm, and had applied before the Registrar of Companies in the present name of the petitioner No. 1, which has subsequently been incorporated in the same name before the Registrar of Companies". Despite such attempt in the affidavit, which is encouraged in no less measure by indulgent courts in not awarding appropriate costs against dishonest litigants, the petitioners have not been able to explain why the individual who signed the application three years prior to the incorporation of the company described himself as a director of the company and used a letter head of the company with a reference to its registered office. Partnership firms do not have directors and, unlike companies, the principal office of a partnership firm is not referred to as its registered office.
158. The company says that since the application by these petitioners must have been made after March 14, 2011, it is obvious that the records pertaining to the approval and allotment of non-residential plots in New Town under the chairman's quota have been fabricated and ante-dated to confer undue benefits for extraneous considerations. The company says that the suspicious circumstances surrounding the approval of allotments accorded by the chairman under his discretionary quota would warrant that the cancellation of those allotments where the land was not transferred is not interfered with. The company has also relied on the New Town, Kolkata Department Authority Act, 2007 and the Rules framed thereunder to demonstrate that the 2014 Building Rules relied upon by the petitioners pertain to plots other than those that came under the control of HIDCO. The 2014 Building Rules relate to areas other than the plots allotted or are still held by HIDCO.
159. Though none has appeared in support of WP 3816(W) of 2012 at the relevant time, it is evident that the petitioners had been allotted a 10-cottah non- residential plot under the chairman's discretionary quota with the letter of intimation issued on February 28, 2011 and the offer of allotment on May 12, 2011. It does not appear that any notice of cancellation has been issued as the prayers in the petition pertain to the refusal by the company to accept the balance payment.
160. The company submits, somewhat tongue in cheek, that it is not without reason that the petitioners have been shy in appearing in support of the petition since the petitioners may have, unwittingly, admitted what actually happened in course of the allotment being made in their favour. Paragraph 3 of the petition is placed where it has been asserted "that on 28.02.2011 after being successful in an open auction for purchasing land at Jyoti Basu Nagar by way of quoting the highest rate ... the petitioners have been allotted" land for setting up a hotel and a community hall. The application has been disclosed at page 26 of the opposition. The application carries the hand-written date of March 5, 2008 and refers to New Town as Jyoti Basu Nagar long before it was sought to be christened as such. The company says that since the name of this applicant figured against serial No.548 in the list appended to the scrutiny committee's minutes of its meeting held on April 28, 2008, it must be concluded that the meeting was ante-dated as the application had been obviously made much later than its stated date.
161. The petitioners in WP 4903(W) of 2012 are also not represented. The petition discloses an e-mail of May 2, 2010 by which the first petitioner, who claims to be a doctor settled in Australia, requested the chairman of the West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation Limited to help the first petitioner to "buy a small piece of land" to set up an institute for treating diabetes. The request was approved by the committee constituted by the board of directors of the company at its meeting of February 28, 2011 and on March 1, 2011 the first petitioner was intimated thereof. The challenge in the petition is to the cancellation of the in-principle allotment by the company's letter of September 14, 2011.
162. The company refers to the copy of the certificate of incorporation relating to the third petitioner company which has been appended to the petition. Such company was incorporated on May 23, 2011, only after an allotment was made in the first petitioner's favour. The company refers to a supplementary affidavit filed by the petitioners where it is admitted that the application to the chairman of the company was made by the first petitioner only on February 14, 2011. The company says that if medical facilities were intended to be set up in one or more pockets in New Town, application should have been invited specifically for such purpose and an assessment made, rather than approve all applications made, either by accident or by design, for setting up hospitals or clinics in New Town. Though the date of the application may otherwise be irrelevant since the allotment was approved by the board of directors of the company and not under the chairman's discretionary quota, the swiftness with which the application was processed appears to be remarkable.
163. The petitioner in WP 4325(W) of 2014 applied to the chairman on February 28, 2008 for allotment of a one-bigha land "to establish a Star-Category Hotel on main road of New Town ..." The chairman approved the allotment of a eight- cottah plot on February 24, 2011 and the company informed the allottee accordingly on February 28, 2011. The offer of allotment was made on April 21, 2011 for freehold land under the chairman's discretionary quota at Rs. 13.364 lakh per cottah. The allotment was cancelled by a letter of December 9, 2013 on the same grounds as cited in a number of petitions noticed earlier. The company contends that nothing in the bare-bodied application of April 28, 2008 could have inspired any right-thinking public authority to approve the allotment in the applicant's favour. The company expresses surprise as to how the chairman could discern from the application that the applicant conformed to the guidelines for obtaining a non-residential allotment in New Town.
164. The petitioners in WP 30078(W) of 2013 have not been represented to make any submission, but the petition includes a copy of a deed of conveyance of August 25, 2008 by which HIDCO sold a plot measuring about 100 sq. m in New Town to the petitioner company, which is incorporated in the United States of America. The petition also includes a copy of a letter dated November 8, 2012 by which the company called upon the allottee to disclose the steps taken by the allottee for using the land after obtaining possession thereof. Though the allottee informed the company by a letter of December 15, 2012 that it would start the construction of the foundation by June 30, 2013, the company called upon the allottee to return the land by executing a deed of reconveyance since the plot had not been used for more than four years after possession thereof had been handed over to the allottee. The primary prayer in the petition is for annulment of the company's letter of December 20, 2012 by which the land was sought to be reclaimed.
165. The petitioners in WP 13956(W) of 2014 applied on February 28, 2008 to set up a vocational training centre. A 10-cottah plot was approved for allotment on February 24, 2011 and the company intimated the petitioners thereof on February 28, 2011. The offer of allotment was issued on May 3, 2011 for freehold land under the chairman's discretionary quota at Rs. 5.50 lakh per cottah. The letter of cancellation of February 5, 2014 was issued on similar lines as in a number of cases noticed earlier: the allotment being in breach of the model code of conduct, the allotment being otherwise improper and the like. The petitioners assert that the letter of cancellation issued to them is in excess of the final decision taken by the board of directors of the company on December 1, 2012.
166. In the company's affidavit in this matter, it has indicated how several persons from the same family including these petitioners, Mohanlal Agarwal and Shivmangal Securities were allotted three non-residential plots in New Town under the chairman's discretionary quota. Shivmangal Securities, the principal petitioner in WP 5158 (W) of 2013, is controlled by two sons of late Sheokaran Agarwal. Mohanlal Agarwal, the lead petitioner in WP 2521(W) of 2014, is another son of late Sheokaran Agarwal. The present petitioners are granddaughters of late Sheokaran Agarwal. The company submits that even if the chairman's approval of all the three allotments is taken at face value, it will be evident that multiple allotments had been made in favour of one family and in derogation of the guidelines pertaining to non-residential allotments under the chairman's discretionary quota.
167. A 20-cottah plot allotted under the chairman's discretionary quota for setting up a shop and office complex is the subject-matter of WP 27109(W) of 2014. The application was made on March 26, 2008 and the "Shopping/office Complex" that the petitioner company promised to develop was to "provide the residents of the locality higher standard of living along with opportunities for MNCs to further develop the region." Such a noble project was too good to lose and the chairman approved the allotment on February 15, 2011 which the company communicated to the petitioner company on February 24, 2011. The offer of allotment was issued on May 2, 2011 at Rs.13.364 lakh per cottah. The allotment was cancelled on December 2, 2013 on similar grounds as most of the other non-residential allotments in New Town. The petitioners say that they have encashed the cheque issued by way of refund without prejudice their contention that the cancellation of their allotment is illegal. The petitioners refer to the notification of November 26, 2001 by which the State transferred all the land that it had acquired for the New Town project to HIDCO. They say since the company had the authority to sell the land, inter alia, for business and commercial purposes and the company was obliged to ensure the development of infrastructure in New Town, it was but natural for the company to allot land for setting up more than one shopping and office complex. The company's criticism of the allotment made in favour of these petitioners and the next, as in most other cases, is that the application lodged could not have satisfied the erstwhile chairman that an allotment under his discretionary quota could be made thereon.
168. The last of the petitions pertaining to the cancellation of allotment of a non-residential plot is WP 7468 (W) of 2014. The petitioner, who appears to be the proprietor of a business running three hotels in the State, applied on February 22, 2008 "to start a modern and sophisticated star quality hotel". The petitioner claimed as son of the soil to have experience in running hotels in Digha, Tarapith and Santiniketan. The proposal was approved by the chairman on February 24, 2011 and such decision was intimated by the company to the petitioner on February 28, 2011. The offer of allotment for the 15-cottah plot was issued on April 21, 2011 on freehold basis at Rs.13.405 lakh cottah. The petitioner claims to have made the entire payment and questions the propriety of the cancellation of the allotment on the ground that the reasons are generic, otherwise unconvincing and the insinuation therein is vague and unsubstantiated. The notice of cancellation of February 5, 2014 is on the same lines as in several other non-residential allotments including the lead petition. The company says that the allotment of the plot in favour of this petitioner was made in dubious circumstances as his application did not refer to any advertisement and nothing in the application could have informed the erstwhile chairman that the applicant conformed to the conditions set in the guidelines for a discretionary allotment.
169. The petitioners who challenge the cancellation of the allotments of residential plots say that their cases cannot be clubbed with those of the non- residential allottees since different considerations arise. The general submission on behalf of the allottees of residential plots whose allotment has been cancelled is that there has to be an element of discretion available to any executive or an elected government which cannot be bound in a straight-jacket. They contend that discretion always involves an element of subjectivity and one man's subjective exercise of his discretion on appropriate principles may be found to be arbitrary by another person from his stand-point or perception. These petitioners suggest that as long as another person similarly situated as one of the aspiring allottees of a residential plot under the chairman's discretionary quota does not complain of being discriminated against, the discretion exercised in favour of an allottee of a residential plot cannot be questioned.
170. The petitioners pertaining to the allotment of residential plots assert that auction can never be the only method of selling residential plots as only persons with deep pockets would then corner all residential estate; and that would lead to increased disparity and concentration of resources in the hands of a few.
171. On the issue of hostile discrimination, these petitioners question the rationale of the classification by the company and its new board in picking only those who had been communicated the decision of the allotment of residential plots in their favour on February 28, 2011. They say that it is evident from the letters of intimation (some of the petitioners insist the letters of intimation are, indeed, the letters of allotment that cannot be resiled from) issued to them that the approval was accorded to their applications by the chairman under his discretionary quota on various dates. They submit that the accidental choice of the company to issue the letters of intimation to some allottees on February 28, 2011 cannot be made the basis for making a distinction between the allottees of residential plots under the chairman's quota. They assert, just as the rejected allottees of non-residential plots also do, that they cannot be seen to be at fault for the company choosing to issue the letter of intimation to them on a particular date. These petitioners demonstrate that a large number of allottees of residential plots, who were informed of their allotment a few days before these petitioners, have been allowed to retain their allotments as, in the wisdom of the company and its new board, there is a discernible distinction between the two classes of allottees merely on the basis of the date of issuance of the letters.
172. One of the principal grounds canvassed by these petitioners is that the chairman invited applications for residential plots in New Town in several newspapers including The Statesman and The Asian Age in English and Anandabazar Patrika, Sambad Pratidin, Aajkaal, Bartamaan and Ganashakti in Bengali. Copies of the advertisements issued in several newspapers have been appended to a number of the petitions.
173. The petitioners in WP 65(W) of 2014 appear to have applied both in English and in Bengali for a residential plot. In the application made in English the applicant claimed to belong to a "Landloser's family", but in the Bengali application the applicant said that her family had land in Ghuni mouza and Thakdari mouza which her brothers had sold to HIDCO. Though she also claimed that the rest of the family land had been acquired by the State, she did not furnish any details of the acquisition. Curiously, the applicant indicated her address to be within the New Town Police Station and the copy of the Bengali application available in the records shows it to be dated in hand as September 27, 2006, but the New Town Police Station was set up by a government notification only on February 20, 2007. Further, the letter of intimation issued to the petitioner on February 28, 2011 pursuant to the chairman's approval in her favour on February 25, 2011 did not refer to any application; though in other cases where the applications are on record, the relevant application is referred to in the letter of intimation. The offer of allotment was issued to the applicant on May 26, 2011 for a 2.24 cottah freehold plot under the chairman's discretionary quota at a total price of Rs.6.72 lakh. The allotment was cancelled by a letter of October 9, 2013 only on the ground that the intimation of the allotment was issued to the allottee "just prior to the date of declaration of General Election and enforcement of model code of conduct ..."
174. Apart from pointing out the reference to New Town police station in an application that was apparently made prior to such police station being notified, the company has disclosed a Bengali application carrying a hand-written date of September 27, 2006 by this applicant. The company says that nothing in either application made by this applicant indicated her income or even the family income for the chairman to consider it appropriate to approve an allotment under his discretionary quota.
175. The petitioners in the first petition pertaining to a residential plot refer to several perceived anomalies. They refer to the charts disclosed in the supplementary affidavit filed by the company in WP 5158(W) of 2013. They say that such charts reveal that though only possession of 105 residential plots in New Town were made over to allottees under the chairman's discretionary quota between 2003 and 2010, 147 allottees under the chairman's discretionary quota obtained possession of the plots allotted to them between 2011 and 2014. If what these petitioners claim is true, then it would be evident that there were 252 allotments made under the chairman's discretionary quota relating to residential plots where possession had been made over to the allottees and another 113 residential plots were allotted under the chairman's discretionary quota where possession has not yet been handed over but the allotments have not been cancelled.
176. On an analysis of the charts pertaining to allotment of residential plots made under the chairman's discretionary quota, these petitioners show that allotments made to Abhijit Saha and Dipak Kumar Bhattacharya, where the letters of intimation were also issued on February 28, 2011, were not cancelled though such allottees are on the same footing as the petitioners herein. It is evident from the relevant chart at page 180 of the said supplementary affidavit that possession of the plot was made over to Saha on April 29, 2011 and to Bhattacharya on May 30, 2011. As per the charts appended to the said supplementary affidavit, 59 applicants other than the petitioners herein, were allotted residential plots under the chairman's discretionary quota in February, 2008. The petitioners suggest that at least the said Saha, Bhattacharya and Rajiv Kumar, who were all issued the letters of intimation on February 28, 2011 like these petitioners, should have been treated in like manner. They show that in Kumar's case the allotment is said to have been cancelled but is now being "reconsidered for removal of certain anomalies."
177. There are some features in the second of the petitions pertaining to the cancellation of an allotment of a residential plot, WP 67 (W) of 2014, which are similar to the first petition in such regard. The petitioner here also claims to be a land-loser in his application made on September 27, 2006, the same date that the previous petitioner also applied in an identical form. As in the previous case, this petitioner also indicated his address within the New Town Police Station at a time when such police station had not been set up. However, that this petitioner was a land-loser is evident from the copy of an award appended to his petition. The letter of intimation in his favour was issued by the company on February 28, 2011 indicating that the chairman had approved the allotment under his discretionary quota on February 25, 2011 for a 2.24-cottah plot in the MIG- individual category. No formal offer of allotment was issued to this petitioner. It appears that the initial deposit on account of application money as demanded by the letter of intimation was not paid by this petitioner. He made an undated application to the company for extension of the time to make the initial payment, whereupon the company permitted the same by a notice of May 12, 2011. The allotment was cancelled by a notice of October 9, 2013 on the ground that the allotment had been made immediately prior to the model code of conduct coming into effect.
178. The company has disclosed the application in its affidavit. The company alleges that there is a similar form of application in several of the residential matters which would indicate that the documents may have been fabricated. In this case, the applicant disclosed an intention to purchase an HIG plot, but later in the application indicated the category to be MIG. The company says that since this application was similar to that of the first residential petition, it carried the identical reference to New Town Police Station a year before such police station was set up.
179. The next petitioners, whose allotment of another 2.24-cottah plot under the MIG-individual category has been cancelled, also applied, coincidentally, on September 27, 2006. Such petitioners in WP 68(W) of 2014 did not refer to the New Town Police Station while indicating their residential address in the application, but sought an allotment in "Jyoti Basu Nagar" in the year 2006 when the then former Chief Minister was still alive and long before New Town, Kolkata was christened "Jyoti Basu Nagar" by a government notification of September 27, 2010. Like the previous petitioner, these petitioners were also shy to disclose the application and it required the company to reveal the same in its opposition. As in the cases of the previous allottees of residential plots under the chairman's discretionary quota, nothing in the application of these petitioners disclosed how the application conformed to the guidelines for allotment under the relevant quota. The letter of intimation was issued to the petitioners on February 28, 2011, following the chairman's approval for the allotment on February 25, 2011. No formal offer of allotment was made to the petitioners and the tentative allotment was cancelled by a notice of October 9, 2013 only on the ground of the allotment being made prior to the model code of conduct becoming effective.
180. The company claims that the application by these petitioners was made after New Town had been named Jyoti Basu Nagar in October, 2010 and has been shown to have been made on September 27, 2006. The company suggests that the reference to Jyoti Basu Nagar in the application would demonstrate that the meeting of the committee to scrutinise residential application was ante-dated as its meeting could not have been held on May 24, 2007 to consider an application that was made after October 21, 2010 when New Town was renamed as Jyoti Basu Nagar. The company also points out that the formal application in the form as supplied by the company to the petitioners is shown to have been received on May 2, 2012 though an affidavit of the joint applicant in the company's file is dated May 26, 2011. The company has alleged at paragraph 8(h) in its affidavit in this matter that the application form was submitted along with the affidavit more than 60 days after the issuance of the letter of allotment.
181. The petitioners in WP 70(W) of 2014 applied to set up a cooperative housing complex. The application made on September 27, 2006, as in the three previous cases, was not disclosed in the petition. The company has carried a copy of such application in its affidavit. The principal promoter of the proposed cooperative society claimed in the application that most of the applicants had made over their land for project New Town. The applicants also referred to the New Town Police Station several months before the Police Station was set up by a notification of February 20, 2007. The letter of intimation in favour of the petitioners was issued on February 28, 2011 upon the chairman approving the allotment on February 25, 2011. The petitioners have also relied on a copy of the signed minutes of the screening committee of May 24, 2007 that found that all the applications for cooperative housing projects were in order and recommended them for allotment. No formal offer of allotment indicating any schedule of payment was issued to these petitioners. The tentative allotment was cancelled by a letter of December 1, 2012 on the ground that the matter had been reviewed by the company and as per the decision of its board of directors on October 22, 2011, the offer stood cancelled. Apart from assailing the grounds indicated in the notice of cancellation, the petitioners say that the decision taken at the board meeting of the company on October 22, 2011 stands eclipsed by the decision on the allotment of plots in New Town taken at the 70th board meeting of the company held on December 1, 2012.
182. The petitioners in WP 37136 (W) of 2013 applied for a plot under the bulk cooperative category. The applicants claimed to be football players "of highly esteemed football clubs of Bvengal (sic, Bengal) ... and representing Bengal/India (in the) National and International football arena ..." The applicants named in the copy of the undated application appended to the petition include one Susmita Saha, another Indrani Sen and a Nishant Mundhra. An altogether different copy of the application is available in the company's records as disclosed by it in its affidavit. The names of the three noticed above were not mentioned among the 20 applicants and several other names included in the application disclosed in the petition did not figure in the application disclosed by the company. Curiously, the application in the company's records is dated September 27, 2006 (which is written in hand), the same date on which several other applications pertaining to residential allotments appear to have been lodged. The petitioners have disclosed the copy of a two-page document signed by the erstwhile chairman on February 22, 2011 by which allotment of plots was approved in respect of 34 cooperative societies. The document indicates that such application had been received pursuant to an advertisement published in September, 2006. The document also reveals that the approval was made in the light of the recommendation made by the screening committee. The relevant committee had recommended the cases on May 24, 2007, as would be evident from the terse minutes of such committee disclosed as annexure P-4 to the petition. The letter of intimation was issued on February 28, 2011 and the offer of allotment was issued on May 21, 2011 for a 13.45 cottah plot on freehold basis at a total consideration of about Rs.44 lakh. The petitioners claim to have made full payment for the allotment before it was sought to be cancelled by a letter of October 8, 2013 on the ground that the allotment had been made just prior to the model code coming into effect. Prior to the issuance of the letter of cancellation, the company had advised its bankers to not accept any further payment in respect of certain allotments made under the chairman' discretionary quota. The name of the petitioners' cooperative society figured in the list appended to the company's letter to the bank dated October 31, 2011. The petitioners have denied the authenticity of the signature appearing in company's copy of the application. They say that their allotment was made in the usual course by reason of their contribution to football and the ground on which the allotment has been cancelled is untenable.
183. The company points out that apart from the discrepancies in the two applications, several of the persons who are shown as members of the proposed cooperative society are not the petitioners herein.
184. Several employees of Howrah Improvement Trust complain in WP 5562(W) of 2014 that their bonafide application for the allotment of a plot in New Town to set up a cooperative housing complex has been arbitrarily cancelled. The copy of the application appended to the petition is undated, but the copy thereof in the company's records carries the same date of September 27, 2006 as the previous applications for residential plots noticed herein. The petitioners assert that as government employees or employees in a government undertaking, the petitioners were entitled to be considered on a separate footing than the other applicants. The letter of intimation of February 28, 2011 informed them of the chairman's approval of the allotment under his discretionary quota on February 21, 2011. The offer of allotment of a 5.98 cottah plot on freehold basis was made on May 12, 2011 at a total price of about Rs.19.73 lakh. These petitioners also refer to the instructions issued by the company to its relevant banker on October 31, 2011 to not receive further payments from several allottees under the chairman's quota. The name of the petitioners' cooperative society, however, does not figure in the chart appended to the company's instructions to the relevant bank on October 31, 2011. The allotment was cancelled on October 8, 2013 by the company on the ground that the tentative allotment had been made only a day prior to the model code of conduct becoming effective.
185. The company refers to the copy of the application in its file. Such document, a copy whereof appears at page 26 of the company's affidavit, carries a date of September 27, 2006 written in hand. As noticed in several other matters pertaining to allotment of residential plots, this date seems to have been favoured by most of the successful allottees. The handwriting of the same date in several of the application looks similar. The company, however, emphasises on the writing and the date of the application. In the copy of the application bearing the hand-written date in the company's records, the document refers to the minutes of a meeting of the proposed cooperative society held on May 19, 2007. The minutes of such meeting are also appended to the application with the signatures of the persons attending the same. The company says that the application could never have been considered since it was filed beyond time and has been obviously ante-dated by overlooking the reference to a later date in the document. The company has specifically referred to such alarming feature evident from the application at paragraph 5 (f) of its affidavit. No affidavit-in- reply has been filed by the petitioners.
186. The petitioner in WP 5566(W) of 2014 was allotted a 2.99 cottah plot in the HIG-I individual category at about Rs.3.57 lakh per cottah. The petitioner has disclosed an undated application made by him to the erstwhile chairman which the petitioner claims, on the basis of the rubber-stamp and the handwriting thereon, was received by the company on June 27, 2010. It is necessary to see, if only as an example, the manner in which the petitioner applied and the particulars disclosed in the application in the context of the guidelines fixed by the company for allotment of residential plots under the chairman's discretionary quota:
"I Sri Ashim Kumar Halder son of Amulya Bhushan Halder residing at 16, Nalta Barabari, Dum Dum Cantonment, Kolkata - 700 028 occupation as central government service want a residential plot for my own residence from your discretionary quota. I have no house / flat in my name."
With such particulars as above, the erstwhile chairman reckoned that the petitioner complied with the guidelines for an allotment to be approved in the petitioner's favour. The guidelines for allotment of residential plots under the chairman's discretionary quota, as disclosed by the company, are worth noticing, particularly to assess the objective that the discretionary quota sought to serve and the eligibility criteria:
"Guidelines for plot allotments under the Chairman's Discretionary Quota
1. ...
2. Objective To -
• encourage distinguished persons from all walks of life to settle in New Town with a view to improve the quality of life.
• address the specific needs and concerns of certain section of society, particularly those economically weaker and socially deprived.
3. Eligibility The following categories of person(s) are eligible for allotment under the quota:
(i) Land losers in the New Town project area,
(ii) Gallantry / other Award Winners - military, paramilitary,
police, civil (or their spouses / parents if posthumous ),
(iii) Single working women without accommodation in the KMDA
area including those residing in working women's hostels,
(iv) Freedom fighters and bonafide participants in post-
independence democratic movements,
(v) Social workers,that is, persons involved in various kinds of social welfare and allied activities like rural development, literacy, mother and child care, juvenile justice, care of the disabled, control of drug abuse, old age care etc.
(vi) Political workers, i.e. office bearers of recognised political parties and elected representatives in various levels of governance.
(vii) Persons belonging to the weaker sections of the society (SC/ST/OBC), religious and linguistic minorities, physically handicapped.
(viii) Eminent persons in established professions like law, medicine, journalism, engineering, civil service, finance, accountancy, commerce and industry, teaching etc.
(ix) Eminent persons in literature, art architecture, cinema, music, culture, sports & related fields.
(x) NRIs
(xi) Persons with a record of valuable service in the development of
the New Town, Kolkata
(xii) Persons with urgent social / economic need of housing."
The letter of intimation was issued to the petitioner on February 28, 2011 pursuant to the chairman's approval of the allotment on February 22, 2011. The petitioner has disclosed the same two-page document relied upon by the petitioners in WP 37136(W) of 2013 to demonstrate that the approval made in favour of this petitioner was along with 33 other applicants for residential plots.
The 34 allotments that were approved by the chairman, as evident from the relevant document of February 22. 2011, pertained to individual plots and plots for cooperative buildings in various categories. The offer of allotment was issued to this petitioner on May 11, 2011. Such allotment was cancelled by a letter of October 9, 2013 only on the ground that the letter of intimation pertaining to the approval of the allotment in the petitioner's favour had been issued on February 28, 2011, a day before the election schedule was announced and the model code of conduct became operative. Like several petitioners before him, this petitioner says that he was not at fault in applying for a plot and the additional reasons indicated in the company's affidavit for the cancellation of the allotment made in his favour should not be countenanced as such reasons were not mentioned in the impugned notice of cancellation. This petitioner insists that he was eligible to apply under the applicable guidelines and the approval of the allotment in his favour by the erstwhile chairman must be presumed to have been made on relevant considerations.
187. The petitioner in WP 2735(W) of 2014 has not disclosed the application he made for the allotment of an individual residential plot. The petition claims, without specifying when the petitioner applied for a plot, that the petitioner was "very much impressed with the progress of development work that was being carried out by the authorities of HIDCO in the said New Town project and accordingly decided to purchase a plot of land and settle there and accordingly made application ..." There is no attempt by this petitioner to indicate whether he was eligible for an allotment under the chairman's discretionary quota or that he made the application pursuant to any advertisement that he noticed. The letter of intimation was issued to this petitioner on February 28, 2011 on the basis of the chairman's approval of the allotment on February 22, 2011. The offer of allotment was issued to him on May 3, 2011 for a 4.48 cottah plot in the HIGI-II category on freehold basis at a total price of slightly over Rs.16 lakh. The allotment was cancelled by a letter of October 8, 2013, only on the ground that the letter of allotment had been issued to the petitioner a day before the model code of conduct became effective. It must not be missed that this petitioner was the private secretary to the minister-in-charge of the Department of Sunderban Affairs, Sports and Youth Services. Apart from the usual ground of questioning the cancellation for the frivolity of the reason cited therein, the petitioner has raised a serious constitutional issue of propriety that when the erstwhile chairman of the company had approved the allotment of the plot in his favour, a lowly general manager could not have issued the notice of cancellation.
188. In its opposition to the petition, the company has spoken of a copy of an application in its file bearing the date of January 12, 2011 which was long after the time for making applications for residential plots under the chairman's quota had expired. The records produced by the company, however, reveal an application in Bengali made on September 26, 2006, but bearing a reference to Jyoti Basu Nagar several years before the name of New Town was sought to be renamed thus.
189. WP 2558(W) of 2014 has been carried by a lawyer practising in Siliguri. The petitioner has not appended the copy of any application that he may have lodged for allotment of a residential plot in his favour under the chairman's discretionary quota. Paragraph 20 of his petition says that in the middle of 2013 he came to learn that several writ petitions had been moved in this court for setting aside similar orders of cancellation of allotments as the petitioner had suffered. It was then that the petitioner started looking for the necessary documents. The rest of the paragraph needs to be seen in the petitioner's words:
"20. ... Your petitioner further states that because of the earthquake that tremored a large portion of Sikkim and Darjeeling District on or about September 2012, your petitioner's chamber wherein documents had been lying, got damaged and your petitioner had to shift his chamber temporarily for repairing the same. As such files got misplaced and after a lot of search, your petitioner was able to retrieve the file containing the essential documents, which have been disclosed in the writ petition. ..."
190. Thus, the "non-essential" document as the application that may have been made by the petitioner was not referred to or relied on in the petition. There is, however, an assertion at paragraph 4 of the petition that the "petitioner made an application in 2010 to the respondent no. 1 for allotment of land against the chairman's discretionary quota." The first respondent to the petition is the State of West Bengal, through the principal secretary in the Department of Housing. The letter of intimation was issued to the petitioner on February 28, 2011 informing him of the chairman's approval of the petitioner's allotment on the same day. The petitioner's plot of 4.48 cottah was in the HIGI-II category at Rs.3.575 lakh per cottah on freehold basis. The petitioner has made no attempt to even suggest that he conformed to the eligibility criteria laid down in the rudimentary guidelines set by the company for allotment of residential plots under the chairman's discretionary quota. The petitioner's allotment was cancelled by a letter of September 14, 2011 only on the ground of the letter of intimation having been issued to him a day before the model code came into effect.
191. The company submits that since this petitioner applied only in 2010, which was long after September, 2006 till when applications for allotment of residential plots under the chairman's discretionary quota could be received, it is evident that the approval of the allotment of a plot in the petitioner's favour was irregular and on extraneous considerations. The company further states that since this petitioner did not submit the formal application within 60 days of the date of the letter of intimation, no offer of allotment was issued to him and no plot was identified. The company maintains that in the absence of any offer of allotment indicating the plot being issued to any aspiring allottee, it is not necessary to withdraw the letter of intimation; though, by way of courtesy, the petitioner was informed of the cancellation of the approval of his allotment made by the erstwhile chairman.
192. The petitioners in WP 34290(W) of 2013 have also not disclosed the application made for a residential plot. As to when the petitioners made the application is completely glossed over in the petition and the narration therein begins with the letter of intimation dated February 28, 2011 issued by the company upon the chairman approving the allotment on February 25, 2011. The offer of allotment of the 2.99 cottah plot under the HIGI-I category on freehold basis was made on May 26, 2011 at a total consideration of Rs.10.68 lakh. It is also some significance that as in the present case, several of the beneficiaries under the chairman's quota were allotted corner residential plots. The allotment was cancelled by a letter of October 9, 2013 on the ground that the intimation of allotment was issued a day before the model code of conduct became effective. Upon this petition being received on November 28, 2013, an interim order was passed that restrained any third party interest in respect of the relevant plot being created. The petitioners were also given leave to encash the cheque by which the money deposited was refunded, without prejudice to their rights herein.
193. The company claims that neither did these petitioners disclose the copy of any application made for allotment of a residential plot under the chairman's discretionary quota nor does the company's file pertaining to the allotment in this matter contain any application. The company refers to the vague averments in paragraph 4 of the petition and demonstrates that such averments are a repetition of what appears in the petition pertaining to WP 2735(W) of 2014. According to the company, given the dubious circumstances surrounding several other allotments made under the chairman's discretionary quota, the allotment made in this case should also be regarded as irregular and based on extraneous considerations. In any event, the company asserts that nothing in the petition demonstrates that these petitioners fulfilled the criteria to obtain an allotment of a residential plot under the chairman's discretionary quota.
194. A 21-cottah plot under the bulk cooperative category was allotted in favour of the next lot of petitioners in WP 224(W) of 2014. The petitioners applied in 2008 and, in the petition, they have called upon the company to produce a copy of their application. The letter of intimation was issued to the chief promoter of Lambodar Cooperative Housing Society Limited on February 28, 2011 upon the chairman approving the allotment on February 22, 2011. However, no "Lambodar" has been impleaded as a party to the present proceedings though the petitioner no. 8 is a HUF and such petitioner's name was also included among the 32 members of the relevant cooperative society. No offer of allotment indicating any payment schedule was issued to these petitioners, but the petitioners claim to have paid the full consideration. The payment made by the petitioners indicates another corner-plot allotment under the chairman's quota. The tentative allotment was cancelled on identical lines as in several other residential allotments by the generic letter of October 9, 2013. These petitioners insist that if the allotments under the chairman's discretionary quota were per se considered to be improper or illegal, all the allotments should have been cancelled and not only a few. They maintain that it is only upon the change of the political party in power in the State that the petitioners have suffered this fate based on the conjectures of the present board of the company as to the circumstances in which allotments were made under the chairman's quota.
195. The company submits that as in several other matters, including WP 2735(W) of 2014 and WP 34290(W) of 2013, no copy of the application made by these petitioners have been disclosed, though the petitioners attempted to be clever by calling upon the company to produce a copy of their application. The company says that the petitioners were aware that they had been allotted a piece of land in an irregular manner and on irrelevant considerations and sought to cover up the irregularity by being aggressive and demanding that the company produce a copy of their application. The company insists that it is inconceivable that an application for the allotment of a plot would be made by any person to a government body, but a copy thereof would not be retained. The company also points out the casual statement in the petition that "Sometime in the year 2008, the petitioners herein applied to HIDCO for a plot of land at New Town ..." appearing in the third paragraph of the petition. The company says that the petitioners do not claim to have made an application pursuant to any advertisement and, in the year 2008, no application could have been received by the company or its erstwhile chairman for allotment of any residential plot in New Town under the discretionary quota.
196. The petitioner in WP 5550(W) of 2012 applied on September 25, 2006 for an individual plot in the MIG category. The application referred to an advertisement published in an unnamed newspaper on September 9, 2006 but it did not indicate how the petitioner was eligible to seek an allotment under the chairman's discretionary quota in accordance with the guidelines declared by the company. The letter of intimation was issued to the petitioner on February 28, 2011 on the basis of the chairman's approval of the allotment in her favour on the same day. The allotment was for a 2.24 cottah plot at Rs. 3 lakh per cottah. The tentative allotment was cancelled on the ground of the model code of conduct by the company's letter of September 14, 2011. The company has claimed in its affidavit in this matter that even the initial application money was not paid by the petitioner within time as it was deposited only on June 3, 2011.
197. The company says that the belated deposit of the application money by this petitioner was returned to her by a cheque bearing No.306261 drawn on Syndicate Bank, New Town Branch dated September 14, 2011 which was encashed by the petitioner by October 28, 2011. The company has relied on a copy of its relevant bank statement in its affidavit. The petitioner has admitted, at paragraph 21 (f) of her affidavit-in-reply, that she has encashed the cheque by which the application money was refunded to her. The company, understandably, suggests that implicit in the petitioner's encashment of the cheque was the acceptance of the cancellation of the allotment made in her favour and the petitioner can no longer be heard to complain of such cancellation.
198. The petition in WP 23157(W) 2012 is similar to the first two petitions pertaining to residential allotments. No copy of the application has been disclosed in the petition and the company says that such omission is for good reason: since the copy of the application dated September 27, 2006 (again, written in hand) refers to New Town as "Jyoti Basu Upanagari" long before New Town was sought to be named after the former Chief Minister. The letter of intimation was issued by the company to the petitioner on February 28, 2011 on the basis of the chairman's approval of the allotment on the same day. The offer of allotment of the 2.99 cottah freehold plot under the HIG-I individual category was issued to the petitioner on May 21, 2011 and it demanded a total price of about Rs.10.68 lakh. The allotment was cancelled by a letter of September 14, 2011 by citing the model code of conduct coming into effect on the day following the issuance of the letter of intimation.
199. The company says that the photocopy of the petitioner's application in the company's records does not match with the copy of the application disclosed in the petition. It is plain to see that the signature on the two copies of the similar document, as disclosed in the petition and in the affidavit-in-opposition, are not the same. In the copy of the document appended to the petition the date is written in Bengali; in the copy that remains in the company's file, the date is in English. There is a mobile telephone number which is written under the address in the document relied upon by the petitioner and under the signature in the document in the company's file. The company has disclosed three sets of documents in its affidavit. The first is a list containing the names of 59 allottees whose allotments were apparently approved by the chairman on February 28, 2011. The document is signed by the officer on special duty to the then chairman and is dated February 28, 2011. The next two documents contain two lists, the first spread over three pages with the chairman's signature and the date of February 28, 2011 on the last page; and the other list bearing 10 names with the chairman's signature and the date of February 28, 2011 thereon. The company says that apart from the fact that none of the approvals accorded by the chairman indicated any reasons in support thereof, it is inconceivable that during the busy day that was February 28, 2011 in the office of HIDCO, the chairman could have had the time to meaningfully consider any of the applications. The company says that the four-page note of the officer on special duty to the then chairman qualified the approval of the allotments as being "subject to fulfilling eligibility condition". The company questions the rationale of the approval without the eligibility of the applicants being assessed and without ensuring that they conformed to the disclosed guidelines.
200. The next petition stands on a completely different footing than the other matters. The petitioner in WP 4470(W) of 2012 was allotted a 5.98 cottah plot under the HIG(C) cooperative category as the chief promoter of the relevant society. The petitioner claims to have applied by an undated letter, a copy whereof appears at page 24 of the petition. The company has, however, disclosed a similar application in its records which carries a printed date of July 24, 2007 at the top and a handwritten date at the bottom. The handwritten date appears to have been the most auspicious for prospective allottees: September 27, 2006. The petitioner seeks to brush aside the several anomalies pertaining to the application pointed out by the company on the ground that the cancellation of the allotment was on an erroneous and fictitious ground. The letter of intimation was issued to the petitioner on February 26, 2011 pursuant to the approval by the chairman on February 10, 2011. However, the notice of cancellation of December 14, 2011 informed the petitioner that the letter of allotment had been "inadvertently" issued as the allotment was not intended to be made in favour of the petitioner's cooperative society. When the petition was received on March 5, 2012, it was pointed out on behalf of the company that the allotment of the same plot had been made in favour another society (which has instituted the next petition referred to herein). On May 16, 2012 an order was made on this petition restraining third party rights being created in respect of the plot in question.
201. The next petition, WP 13996(W) of 2013, is by the chief promoter of another cooperative society which was allotted the same plot No.IIIA-2252 under Action Area IIIA of New Town in the MIG(C) category that had apparently been mistakenly allotted to the cooperative society in WP 4470(W) of 2012. The petitioner in this case apparently made an application on September 26, 2006 for allotment of a residential plot to set up a cooperative complex in New Town. The application claimed that the members of the housing cooperative society were unsuccessful in obtaining an allotment, presumably under the lottery therefor conducted by the company. The letter of allotment was issued for a 5.01 cottah plot on February 28, 2011 on the basis of the chairman's approval thereof on the same day. The offer of allotment was made on May 11, 2011 at a total consideration of about Rs.13.78 lakh. The company issued a similar letter of September 14, 2011 as in several other cases calling upon the petitioner to withdraw the application. The allotment was cancelled by a notice of February 28, 2013 only on the ground that the letter of intimation was issued a day before the model code came into effect.
202. The company says that the photocopy of the application in its file bears the tell-tale sign as in several other applications which were approved for allotment by the chairman under his discretionary quota, in the date being hand-written in a printed letter. The company submits that it is unnatural that a printed application for something as important as an allotment of a plot of land made to a government body would remain undated or the date would be written in hand. The company suggests that it would be too much of a coincidence for so many of successful applicants under the chairman's discretionary quota citing undated applications or printed applications where the date is written in hand. The company's file pertaining to this matter that has been carried to court and offered inspection of to advocate for the petitioner carries the copy of what appears to be a recommendation of this petitioner's application by another minister or the office of such other minister.
203. The petitioners in WP 3245(W) of 2012 are lawyers practising in this court. The petitioners claim to have applied on September 26, 2006 for the allotment of a plot to set up a cooperative housing complex, but no copy of the application has been disclosed in the petition. The letter of intimation was issued to the petitioners on February 28, 2011 following the chairman's approval of the allotment under the discretionary quota on the same day. The offer of allotment was made on May 18, 2011 for a 5.98 cottah plot on freehold basis at a consideration of about Rs.19.73 lakh. As in the cases of several other allottees of residential plots, the petitioners were required by the company's letter of September 14, 2011 to withdraw the application on the ground that the allotment under the chairman's discretionary quota was made a day before the model code came into effect. The allotment has, however, not yet been cancelled since the petition has been pending from or about February, 2012.
204. Apart from the company questioning the propriety of the chairman's approval of the allotment of a residential plot in these petitioners' favour along with a host of others on a busy February 28, 2011, it points out several anomalies pertaining to this matter that have been detailed in its affidavit. The eight who apparently applied in September, 2006 are not all parties to the petition. The application has not been disclosed in the petition, but paragraph 2
(c) of the company's affidavit says that one Kazi Abrarullah, who was shown to be a joint applicant in the purported application, was not enrolled with the Bar Council at the relevant point of time. The company also asserts that the second- named applicant in the purported application is neither a petitioner nor does such person support the allotment. At least two of the original applicants, according to the company, were not members of the Bar Association. The company has produced its records which contain a copy of an application of September 27, 2006 wherein the applicants claimed in the first sentence as follows:
"We are introducing ourselves as practicing (sic, practising) Advocates of Hon'ble Calcutta High Court."
205. The next lot of petitioners in WP 12617(W) of 2012 has also complained of the cancellation of a plot allotted to a cooperative housing society. No copy of any application that may have been made by the petitioners for allotment of a plot in New Town in their favour has been disclosed in the petition, though paragraph 6 of the petition says that the application was allotted a number, 8646, by the company. The letter of intimation was issued to the chief promoter of the proposed cooperative housing society on February 28, 2011 upon the chairman approving the allotment on February 22, 2011. The offer of allotment was issued on May 2, 2011 for a 5.98 cottah plot on freehold basis in the HIG-C category at a total price of about Rs.19.73 lakh. The petition was instituted upon the instalments sought to be tendered by the petitioners not being accepted by the concerned bank. Following a query under the Right to Information Act, the company informed the chief promoter of the society that the instructions issued by the company to its bankers to not receive further payments relating to certain allotment of plots in New Town were on the strength of "a Resolution passed by the Board of Directors of WBHIDCO Ltd. which speaks that in view of the wishes of the State Govt. and more particularly in view of allotments made/issued just before implementation of the Code of Conduct ... approval was accorded to cancellation of all such plots concerned." Notwithstanding such assertion in the company's response to the query on April 26, 2012, there does not appear to be any formal letter of cancellation of the allotment, presumably because the petition was filed in the year 2012.
206. WP 18529(W) of 2013 was among the petitions taken up for hearing, but it was dismissed as not pressed on April 16, 2015.
207. One of the rejected joint allottees in WP 36084(W) of 2013 was the director (engineering) of the West Bengal Housing Board when he applied for a plot in New Town on February 14, 2011. This matter lends credence to how some of the applications may have been processed before they culminated in allotments being made under the chairman's discretionary quota. Within 10 days of the application being made, it received the approval of the chairman. It is evident that this application did not receive any attention of the screening or other committee since there was virtually no time between the application being made and it being approved. The letter of intimation was issued to the applicant on February 28, 2011. The letter of allotment forwarded an application form, just as such letters in the cases of other residential plots had also forwarded formal application forms. The application form, along with documents in support thereof, appears to have been submitted by the petitioners jointly. The offer of allotment of a 2.99 cottah HIG-I plot on freehold basis was made on May 2, 2011 at a total price of about Rs.10.69 lakh. The allotment was cancelled by a notice of October 8, 2013 on the same ground that the approval of the allotment was communicated to the allottee a day before the model code became effective. These petitioners make several points, including that they should not suffer for the perceived arbitrariness of allotments under the erstwhile chairman's discretionary quota. They overlook the fact that the application for the allotment did not mention how the applicant was eligible for consideration under the chairman's discretionary quota, but assert that the formal application submitted by them subsequent to the approval being granted by the chairman included all material to demonstrate that the petitioners were eminently qualified to obtain an allotment under the discretionary quota. They refer to the company's affidavit to suggest that irrelevant considerations were taken into account in cancelling their allotment. They also read out several other names from one of the charts appended to the company's supplementary affidavit filed in WP 5158(W) of 2013 to suggest that they have been picked out for hostile discrimination. In the company's affidavit in this matter it has been alleged that these petitioners applied on September 27, 2006, which was the last day for seeking allotments under the chairman's discretionary quota. The petitioners assert that they did not apply on September 27, 2006. They claim that the allottees of residential plots under the chairman's discretionary quota named against serial Nos. 317 to 356 of the relevant chart at page 178 of the said supplementary affidavit, including a joint secretary in the Housing Department and the Housing Commissioner, stood on the same footing as these petitioners, but such other allotments had not been cancelled and most of such allottees had been made over possession of their plots in 2013 and 2014, long after the perceived anomalies in the allotment of residential plots under the chairman's discretionary quota were apparently discovered. The relevant allottees whose names figure against serial Nos.317 to 356 at page 178 of the supplementary affidavit were all informed of the approval of the allotments in their favour in February, 2011 and the approval in almost every case was accorded in January or February of the same year. The petitioners say that the joint secretary in the Housing Department, whose name figures against serial No.322, was given possession of the relevant plot on February 4, 2013 and the Housing Commissioner, whose name figures against serial No.334, was given possession on January 16, 2013. The petitioners claim that if the allotments made in favour of several cooperative societies, as evident from page 179 of the supplementary affidavit, were not cancelled despite the cooperative societies not being registered at the time that such supplementary affidavit was affirmed in May, 2014, there was no reason to cancel the allotments which were intimated to the allottees on February 28, 2011. The petitioners submit that it was the company which chose to intimate the petitioners of the chairman's approval of their allotments on February 28, 2011 and it defies logic that an allotment approved on February 18, 2011 would pass muster under the scrutiny that the allotments made by the chairman under his discretionary quota have been subjected to, but an approval on February 24, 2011 would be caught in the dragnet merely because the letter of intimation was issued on February 28, 2011.
208. The company says that these petitioners were ineligible for any allotment under the chairman's discretionary quota since the application was filed only on February 14, 2011. The company says the arbitrariness in the allotments of plots under the chairman's discretionary quota would be evident from the fact that this application was even entertained and processed. The company refers to the principal petitioner's name figuring against serial No. 266 in the list appended to the minutes of the committee appointed to examine the applications for residential plots held on May 24, 2007. The first applicant is described as the director (engineering) of the West Bengal Housing Board in such list. Paragraph 4(b) of the company's affidavit claims that the first petitioner did not hold the post of director (engineering) of the Housing Board on February 27, 2006 when he is shown to have applied. According to the company, the inclusion of the first petitioner's name in the list of the applications purportedly scrutinised by the relevant committee on May 24, 2007 would demonstrate that such minutes cannot be believed and ought to be seen as fabricated and ante-dated. It is accepted on behalf of the petitioners that the first petitioner was not the director (engineering) of the Housing Board in September, 2006. In his affidavit-in-reply, the petitioners have altogether denied having made an application for allotment of a residential plot in New Town on September 27, 2006.
209. The petitioner in WP 27353(W) of 2013 claims to have applied for a residential plot in New Town under the chairman's discretionary quota on August 19, 2005. The copy of the relevant document appended as annexure P-4 to the petition suggests that it was received by the company on the same day. For the sheer quality of the application, the particulars furnished in the application call to be noticed to the last detail. The petitioner described himself as "Student of Electrical Engineering, IIIrd year, Future Institute of Engineering and Management under WBUT, Kolkata. Training in Computer from NIIT, Represented South Point H. School in interschool meet in cricket, represented W.B.State as a member of the cricket team to play against Bangladesh and various states of India." As per the category in which the petitioner applied, the petitioner mentioned "Engineering student with IT bias. (75% marks in the last test)." As for supporting documents, the application promised, "Will be provided when required." The young cricketer's application was too good to resist and it resulted in a letter of intimation being issued by the company on February 28, 2011 immediately on the chairman's approval of the allotment under his discretionary quota on the same day. On May 26, 2011 the petitioner claims to have written to the company that he received the letter of intimation by ordinary post only on May 23, 2011. He requested for the time to make the deposit to be extended by 60 days. He wrote another letter on July 23, 2011 seeking to ascertain how he could pay for the allotment approved in his favour. The company does not appear to have responded to either letter. No formal offer of allotment was issued to this petitioner in furtherance of the approval of a 2.24 cottah plot under MIG-I category in his favour. The company informed him on September 14, 2011 that the allotment of the plot in the petitioner's favour stood cancelled as intimation thereof was issued to the petitioner a day before the model code of conduct came into effect. The budding cricketer is aggrieved by the cancellation of the allotment approved in his favour. He suggests that there was nothing illegal in the approval of the allotment in his favour but the real reason would be evident from a report of the The Times of India of January 1, 2011 that two ministers of the State government held a meeting to discuss the issue of allotment of plots in New Town with officials of the company and that the government had "decided that all land deals that Hidco had implemented during the Left rule, particularly during the last few months, will be probed into." The report also referred to the dissolution of a body by the name of Bhangar-Rajarhat Area Development Authority. The petitioner exhorts that there is no place for any oral direction in administrative law and the company could not have acted on its imaginary perception of the wishes of the State government without any written direction issued in accordance with law in such regard. The company's affidavit in the matter refers to the committee that had been constituted by the erstwhile chairman to examine the applications for residential plots under his discretionary quota. The company's affidavit avers that "the said Committee met for the last time on 24th May, 2007 at 3 p.m. From the minutes of the said Committee as found in the records of WBHIDCO it appears that on that single date i.e. 24th May, 2007, the Committee had completed the examination of all applications for allotment and recommended 835 applications relating to different categories." The company has also expressed surprise at the alleged recommendation of the committee of May 24, 2007 being "suddenly" taken up "after nearly four years, on the eve of election" by the chairman for allotments being made under his discretionary quota.
210. The petitioners in WP 2569(W) of 2014 have not disclosed their application in the petition. The company has appended a copy of the application for allotment of a plot to set up a cooperative building in New Town. The application is dated September 27, 2006 in hand and the members of the cooperative society as disclosed in the application are different from the eight petitioners who have filed the petition, save three of them. The letter of intimation was issued on February 28, 2011 following the chairman's approval of the allotment on February 22, 2011. The formal letter of offer was issued on May 12, 2011 for a 5.01 cottah MIG-C category plot on freehold basis at a total consideration of about Rs. 13.78 lakh. The petitioners claim to have made full payment of the consideration and even the documentation charges. The allotment was cancelled by a letter of October 9, 2013 by citing the model code of conduct coming into effect a day after the issuance of the letter of intimation. The petitioners rely on the principle of promissory estoppel and say that upon the offer of allotment being issued and the payment for the land received by the State, it had no authority to cancel the same. The petitioners also remind the court that what is relevant for the present consideration is whether the cancellation of the allotments are illegal and not whether the allotments made under the chairman's discretionary quota were justified.
211. The company has carried the photocopy of the application in its file which also bears a rubber-stamp with the same initials as in several other matters and the date of June 24, 2010. The company suggests that it is inconceivable that all the doubtful applications have been received by the same official.
212. No copy of any application has been disclosed by the petitioner in WP 929(W) of 2014 but it has been asserted that the petitioner had made a "prayer for allotment of a plot of land" at paragraph 3 of the petition without any further particulars thereof being furnished. The letter of intimation was issued by the company to the petitioner on February 28, 2011 indicating that the chairman had approved the allotment on February 26, 2011. The offer of allotment was issued on May 2, 2011 for a 2.24 cottah plot in the MIG-I category at a total consideration of Rs.6.72 lakh on freehold basis. The letter of cancellation of the allotment was issued on identical lines as several other similar letters of October 9, 2013. This petitioner has made no attempt to even urge that he was eligible for the allotment.
213. The petitioner in WP 5655(W) of 2014 claims to have applied as a land- loser and says that she was entitled to a plot by virtue of her status and her allotment could not have been cancelled by the general sweep with which the new board of the company has approached several allotments of plots in New Town under the chairman's quota. The petitioner purchased a plot measuring about 2 cottah 5 chittack in mouza Thakdari in Rajarhat at a consideration of Rs.23,000/- by a deed of sale of May 22, 1992. The petitioner claimed in her application of February 23, 2011 that such plot was acquired by the State for the purpose of developing the township against a compensation of Rs.75,273/- paid to her in August, 2003. Her application received the immediate attention of the erstwhile chairman who approved the allotment on February 26, 2011 for the letter of intimation to be issued to the petitioner by the company on February 28, 2011. The offer of allotment was issued on May 3, 2011 for a 2.24 cottah MIG-I plot on freehold basis at a consideration of Rs.6.72 lakh. The allotment was cancelled by a letter of October 9, 2013 for the intimation being issued to the petitioner a day before the model code came into effect. The petitioner says that her protest of the cancellation by a letter received by the company on November 20, 2013 has been rejected without any reasons on December 3, 2013. It is submitted on behalf of the petitioner at the hearing that though her application was dated February 23, 2011, she had applied much earlier and it was the same application which was submitted again on February 23, 2011. However, the petition does not make out what has been submitted at the hearing on behalf of the petitioner on such aspect. A casual reading of the first six paragraphs of the petition would give the unmistakable impression that the petitioner had applied to the chairman for an allotment under his discretionary quota only on February 23, 2011. The date of the application is of some significance since it is not the petitioner's case that she applied at a time when applications could have been received for allotments under the chairman's quota pursuant to the dates therefor being fixed by any advertisement. The company has insinuated in its affidavit that the allotment was made under the discretionary quota on extraneous considerations as the application was not vetted by any screening committee and the petitioner's status as a land-loser had to be assessed in the backdrop of the petitioner having acquired land in Rajarhat only in 1992.
214. WP 25416(W) of 2012 pertains to an allotment of a plot to a proposed cooperative society. The application has not been disclosed in the petition, but the company has revealed the same in its affidavit. The chief promoter of the proposed cooperative society applied as the persons indicated in the application were "living away from kolkata ... (and were) facing much trouble to reside in kolkata or near kolkata." The letter bears the hand-written date of September 25, 2006. The letter of intimation was issued by the company to the petitioners on February 28, 2011 following the chairman's approval of the allotment on February 22, 2011. The petitioners have been resourceful enough to disclose a copy of a document as annexure P-4 to petition which is signed by four members of a committee that was apparently set up to examine the applications for residential plots under the chairman's discretionary quota. The minutes as disclosed are worth noticing in their entirety:
"Minutes of the meeting dated 24.05.2007 of the committee to examine the application received for allotment of land under Charimans Discretionary Quota received in response to the advertisement published (sic, in) local news papers on 09.09.2006 as mentioned below:-
LIG Co-operative - 13 Nos.
MIG Co-operative - 25 Nos.
HIG Co-operative - 53 Nos.
Bulk Co-operative
-1 (32 Members) - 25 Nos.
HIG-(I) I & II - 521 Nos.
MIG-Individuals - 198 Nos.
"The Committee recommended that all the application are in order and may be placed before the Chairman for allotment under his discretion."
The designations of the four members of the committee are printed below their signatures as "G.M(A)", "OSD to Chairman", "M.D. & Principal Advisor to Chairman", and "Chairman" with the "Chairman", presumably, being the chairman of the committee without his more appropriate designation being disclosed in the minutes.
215. The company has subsequently disclosed the same minutes with several lists appended thereto. The first list pertains to applicants for individual plots and the names of 521 applicants are recorded with the dates of applications and categories indicated. The next list is of the 198 applicants for MIG plots. The third list contains the names of 53 applicants for HIG cooperative plots. The fourth list contains the names of 25 applicants for MIG cooperative plots. The fifth list has the names of 13 applicants for LIG cooperative plots. The sixth and final list has the names of 25 applicants for bulk cooperative plots.
216. The letter of allotment was issued by the company to the chief promoter of the proposed housing cooperative society on February 28, 2011 indicating the chairman's approval of the allotment on February 22, 2011. The letter of offer was issued on May 12, 2011 for a 5.98 cottah plot on freehold basis under the HIG-C category at a total consideration of about Rs.19.73 lakh. The petitioners claim that they discovered that their allotment may have been in jeopardy following the response of State Bank of the India on November 26, 2011 to the petitioners' query that the bank had been advised by the company in terms of a letter dated October 31, 2011 "not to accept instalments/deposits, inter alia, from you, in connection with the allotment of land." The allotment made in favour of the petitioners has not been cancelled, presumably because this petition was filed shortly upon receipt of the bank's communication and an order was passed thereon on February 25, 2013 directing the respondents to not allot or transfer or alienate the property in question in favour of any other person. The petitioners have impleaded several other allottees and one of them, the respondent No. 13, has filed an affidavit-in-opposition. At paragraph 26 of the petition, the petitioners have alleged that the officer on special duty to the erstwhile chairman of the company, who has been impleaded as the eighth respondent, had also been allotted a plot of land on February 28, 2011. The petitioners claim that since such person "is having access within the office of the HIDCO authorities, his plot of land was not cancelled ... (and) ... formalities in respect of the plot of land of Kalyan Sen has been completed and the possession of the land has been handed over to him." The petitioners suggest that blatant favouritism was exercised by the company in not cancelling the allotment in favour of the officer attached to the chairman. The petitioners have also questioned the allotment made to the HIDCO Employees' Housing Cooperative Society Limited and allege that since such persons have access to the powers that be, the allotment was not cancelled. According to the petitioners, the deeds of convenience in favour of Kalyan Sen and the said society were executed with undue haste in May, 2011. The petitioners claim at paragraph 28 of the petition that that allotments made unto several others under the chairman's discretionary quota, including to police personnel and to two former judges of this court, stood on the same footing as the allotment made in favour the petitioners, but the other allotments have been preserved while the petitioners' has arbitrarily been cancelled. The petitioners insist that if their allotment has to go, all similarly situated allottees of residential plots under the chairman's discretionary quota should suffer the same fate.
217. The company points out that this is another case of the application having been apparently misplaced. The company refers to paragraph 10 of the petition where the petitioners claim to have applied on August 18, 2005 though the copy of the application in the company's records bears a hand-written date of September 25, 2006. There is no doubt that the copy of the application that is in the company's records is, other than the hand-written date, an identical copy of the application said to be dated August 18, 2005 appearing at page 78 of the petition. The signature is identical, which is unusual as signatures of the same person, however similar, are rarely identical. The marks appearing in some parts of the two documents are the same. The company says that only the printed date of August 18, 2005 has been removed and a hand-written date of September 25, 2006 inserted in the copy of the same document and kept in the company's files since the list appended to the minutes of the meeting of the committee allegedly held on May 24, 2007 to scrutinise the applications for residential allotments carried such date of the application. The company says that it is evident that records have been fudged in course of the allotments being made under the chairman's discretionary quota.
218. The petitioner in WP 5988(W) of 2014 has not disclosed a copy of the application made for the allotment an individual plot to him but has averred at paragraph 10 of the petition that such application was made "within 27.09.2006". The letter of allotment in his favour was issued on February 28, 2011 following the chairman's approval of the allotment under his discretionary quota on February 22, 2011. The petitioner has disclosed the copy of a two-page document relied on by several other petitioners, which evidences the approval accorded to several applications by the chairman on February 22, 2011. The petitioner was issued the offer of allotment on May 12, 2011 for a 2.24 cottah MIG-I plot on freehold basis at a consideration of Rs.6.72 lakh. The petitioner claims to have made the entire payment but suffered a notice of cancellation of October 9, 2013 on the ground that the letter of intimation was issued to him a day before the model code of conduct became effective.
219. The final matter, WP 22158(W) of 2011, was one of the earliest of the petitions challenging the cancellation of the allotment of a plot in New Town. The petitioners have relied on a copy of their application made on September 13, 2006. The letter of intimation was issued by the company to the chief promoter of the cooperative society on February 28, 2011 upon the chairman's approval on the same day. The offer of allotment was issued to the petitioners on May 12, 2011 for a 5.98 cottah plot in the HIG-C category on freehold basis at a consideration of about Rs.19.73 lakh. The allotment was cancelled by a letter of September 14, 2011 on the ground that the letter of intimation was issued a day before the model code of conduct came into effect. An ad interim order was declined when this petition was received on January 20, 2012, whereupon an appeal was preferred and an order obtained restraining the respondents from creating third party rights in respect of a property for a limited duration. These petitioners have relied on the perceived anomalies indicated in the supplementary affidavit filed in the lead petition pertaining to non-residential allotments wherein it has been claimed that the allotments made in favour of at least 180 have not been cancelled and that 81 allottees of residential plots under the special quota had obtained possession of their land between 2011 and 2014.
220. With the facts pertaining to the petitions in the saga that was the discretionary allotment of plots in New Town, Rajarhat having been noticed in some detail, the matter now reaches its business end for the assessment. But before it can be ascertained whether the actions of the company questioned by the petitioners herein call for any interference, it is necessary to summarise the salient features, then to appreciate the issues that fall for consideration and the tools therefor before proceeding to assess them.
221. All but one of the live petitions herein pertain to a matter other than the cancellation or the threatened cancellation of the allotment of plots in New Town; and even in that solitary matter, the company says that it proposes to cancel the allotment altogether rather than have the allotment converted from freehold to leasehold. In only one of the live petitions, the possession was made over to the allottee; but the allottee had not used the land within reasonable time of obtaining possession thereof and the company has issued notice to cancel the deed of conveyance and repossess the land. The concerned allottee has not pursued the petition, even though it is among the bunch taken up for consideration: the petitioners in WP 30078(W) of 2013 have not been represented on any of the nearly 30-odd days that these petitions have been heard at the final stage. Of the two major groups of petitioners pertaining to non-residential allottees and residential allottees, six of the allotments in the non-residential class have been made by the board of directors of the company and not under the chairman's discretionary quota. Such six matters may have to be seen slightly differently.
222. The petitioners claim, almost in unison, that the only issue that falls for consideration is whether the acts of the company complained of are rational or reasonable. They insist that whatever else may be seen in these matters, what cannot be questioned is the allotment of the plots made to the petitioners. They argue, in general, that once it is seen that the company had due authority to allot plots in New Town and it allotted the plots under such authority, the allotments cannot be challenged by revisiting the circumstances in which the allotments may have been made. To begin with, the petitioners say that it is not as if the allotments made in their favour were illegal; that the cloud sought to be raised is on account of perceived illegality - and perception depends on the perspective, which may be tinged or skewed or of a different hue. They suggest that the arrow having been shot, it can no longer be brought back to the quiver. In addition, they cite the legal ground of estoppel and maintain that the acts of the company complained of are a direct result of the change in the government and, as such, vindictive. The petitioners submit that, in any event, each cancellation or threatened cancellation of the allotments has to be seen on the anvil of the reasons proffered therefor and not decided by a general sweep in the light of the aura of suspicion created as to the allotments. They also question the motives and the propriety of the company's action in assailing allotments made under the previous regime by not cancelling all the allotments but picking out a few for such harsh treatment. The petitioners submit that there is no suggestion, far less any evidence, that any of these petitioners obtained the allotment by offering illegal gratification.
223. There is both a superficial and a more wholesome answer to the primary issue that the petitioners raise, that it is the cancellation or threatened cancellation which has been called into question and not the allotments made in their favour. Article 226 of the Constitution confers the power on every High Court to issue certain writs to any person or authority, subject to territorial considerations. Though the history of the writ jurisdiction in India dates back to the Royal Charter of 1774, the origin of writs is in medieval England. It may not be necessary in the context to trace the history from the Provisions of Oxford of 1258 or the Provisions of Westminster of 1259 since the authority to issue writs in this country has to be guided by constitutional principles and the all pervading sense of reasonableness which is the very ethos of the suprema lex. It is not as if such consideration is relevant only for the superior courts exercising the prerogative of issuing writs, but it would apply to all courts in the pursuit of the juridical holy trinity of justice, equity and good conscience.
224. If the petitioners' contention is upheld and a myopic assessment of the acts of the company complained of is conducted without reference to the possible consequence of an order annulling the acts complained of, it would be an adjudication in derogation of the constitutional principles and not in public interest. It may be useful to refer to the opinion in Platinum Entertainment (supra) where the Supreme Court, in effect, held that the High Court had missed the woods for the trees in confining itself to the impugned cancellation of the allotment without peering into the circumstances in which the grant had been made in favour of the writ petitioners.
225. The principle that a decision affecting a citizen has to be tested only on the basis of the reasons indicated in the decision in support thereof as recognised in Mohinder Singh Gill (supra) has been substantially watered down in recent years and held not to be applicable where larger public interest is involved. Indeed, K. Shyam Kumar (supra) advocates that "the decision-maker can always rely upon subsequent materials to support the decision already taken when larger public interest is involved." There can be no larger public interest than when the government allots the most scarce of commodities: land. The company's assertion that the allotments made by the erstwhile management of the company or the erstwhile chairman under his discretionary quota are all in suspicious circumstances, cannot be brushed aside as irrelevant without assessing the quality of such assertion.
226. Contemporary jurisprudence suggests that the classical Wednesbury test of reasonableness has yielded to the doctrine of proportionality. But the judgment in K. Shyam Kumar (supra) observes that though the "current trend seems to favour proportionality test but Wednesbury has not met with its judicial burial and a State burial, with full honours is surely not to happen in the near future." At least one later Supreme Court judgment [(2011) 15 SCC 616 (Maharashtra Land Development Corporation v. State of Maharashtra]] has observed that the "Wednesbury principle of reasonableness has given way to the doctrine of proportionality." The distinction made in that case between the two sets of tests is that under the "Wednesbury principle administrative action can be subject to judicial review, on the ground of illegality, irrationality or procedural impropriety" whereas the "principle of proportionality envisages that a public authority ought to maintain a sense of proportion between particular goals and the means implied to achieve those goals, so that administrative action impinges on the individual rights to the minimum extent to preserve public interest." Without resorting to tautology, the two principal decisions that fall for consideration in the present matters are to be tested to ascertain whether they were arbitrary or in abuse of the discretion available. The two decisions are: first, the cancellation or threatened cancellation of the allotments; and, secondly, the manner of allotment of the plots to the petitioners in these matters. The propriety of the later decision has necessarily to be considered ahead of the other; for, if it is found that there was no ground to cancel or want to cancel the subject allotments, the manner of allotment would not be required to be gone into.
227. There was a change of the political dispensation in government in or about May, 2011. As a consequence, the government's nominees on the board of directors of the company were replaced by or about August, 2011 and the new board took stock of the business and affairs of the company subsequent thereto. At the first meeting of the newly constituted board of directors of the company, it decided to look into the status of the allotment of plots in New Town. In course of such exercise, the board or the company in its new avatar perceived that the allotments made under the previous dispensation may have been improper. As would appear from the initial notices issued in many of the cases herein in September and October, 2011, the company called upon the allottees to withdraw their applications for allotments which would have resulted in the automatic annulment of the allotments or the approval thereof without shedding any blood. Over the next year or two that the company issued letters of cancellation to several of the allottees of plots in New Town, whether the allotments had been made by the board or under the chairman's discretionary quota, it does not appear that the company had a full grasp over the circumstances in which the allotment of plots, other than by way of lottery, had been made under the previous regime. This was reflected in the notices of cancellation issued to several of the petitioners in the present proceedings. The letters of cancellation pertaining to allotment of non-residential plots had a bit of this and bit of that; but it is obvious that the company had not been able to discover or comprehend the level or extent of arbitrariness with which allotment of plots in New Town had been made under the former management of the company and, particularly, under the chairman's discretionary quota. But now that everything has been laid bare and the suspicion that the company harboured as to the manner of allotment while cancelling or threatening to cancel the allotments, appears to have been founded on good grounds, the acts of the company now complained of have to be assessed in the backdrop of the manner in which the allotments were made in the first place.
228. The new management of the company that was installed in the middle of 2011 perceived that the allotments made immediately before the 2011 assembly elections were announced required to be looked into. There was substantial basis for such decision, as the last dates for receiving applications for residential and non-residential allotments were in 2006 and 2008, respectively; but the number of allotments made under the chairman's discretionary quota in the four calendar years prior to 2011 showed a remarkable jump in the first two months of 2011. Till the year 2007 no allotment of any non-residential plot in New Town was made since it appears that non-residential allotments were opened up only in 2008. The last date for receiving applications for the allotment of non-residential plots under the chairman's quota was March 31, 2008. It would be expected that within reasonable time of such last date for receiving applications, the applications would be considered and allotments made. The petitioners have relied on the minutes of the meeting of a committee that was set up to scrutinise the applications received for the allotment of non-residential plots. Such committee, according to the petitioners and the records available with the company, is said to have met on April 28, 2008 to consider the applications and, in one sweep and without assigning any other reasons, the committee found all the applications to be in order and worthy of allotment save the few which either did not indicate the size of the plot required or the purpose for the allotment. If the relevant committee considered the applications for non-residential plots - whatever may have been the quality of such consideration - and it submitted a report by way of the minutes of the meeting on or about April 28, 2008, the chairman should have acted thereupon within reasonable time of the receipt thereof. But the undisputed figures of allotment show that the chairman allotted one non-residential plot in 2008 and another four in 2009. The tempo picked momentum with 43 allotments of non-residential plots in 2010, most of them appearing to be in the last two or three months of the year. Compare this to the 63 allotments of non-residential plots made by the chairman under his discretionary quota in the first two months of 2011 with 15 of them being approved for allotment on February 28, 2011. The board approved the allotment of 27 other non-residential plots at its meeting of February 28, 2011.
229. The last date for receiving applications for the allotment of residential plots in New Town was September 27, 2006. Again, it would have been expected that the allotments from the chairman's discretionary quota under such head would be made within reasonable time of the last date for the receipt of applicants. Several of the petitioners pertaining to the residential allotments have referred to a committee that was set up to scrutinise the applications received for the allotment of residential plots in New Town. Such committee, according to several of the petitioners and the records available with the company, is said to have met on May 24, 2007 to consider the applications and, without assigning any reasons, the committee found all 835 applications to be in order and worthy of allotment. When the relevant committee considered the applications for residential plots - whatever may have been the quality of such consideration - and it submitted a report by way of the minutes of the meeting on or about May 24, 2007, the chairman should have acted thereupon within reasonable time of the receipt thereof. In the four calendar years preceding 2011, a total of 25 residential allotments were approved by the chairman under his discretionary quota: seven in 2007; six in 2008; two in 2009; and, ten in 2010. In the first two months of 2011 the chairman approved the allotment of 219 residential plots in New Town, 60 of them on February 28, 2011. In the light of the alarming flurry of activities towards the end of 2010 and the crescendo in the first two months of 2011, the company was justified in revisiting the allotments or, at least, reviewing the circumstances in which the allotments were made. The figures suggested a story and it was perfectly in order for the company to try to discover it.
230. In most cases where the allotments have been cancelled or threatened to be cancelled, the only reason cited or one of the several reasons given by the new management of the company is that the intimation of the approval of the allotment was made just prior to the assembly elections in the State being announced. The petitioners have attempted to discredit the reason by referring to several judgments and even the opinion of the Election Commission that a process which had been started long prior to any election being announced would remain unaffected by the model code of conduct. What the petitioners have attempted to gloss over is the fact that the trend of allotment that started towards the end of 2010 ought to have continued in its upward graph even after February 28, 2011 or tapered off in a reasonable manner without the abruptness with which it seems to have been arrested on February 28, 2011. Notwithstanding what the company may have said in its letters of cancellation, the issue is not as to whether the allotments made immediately prior to the election dates being announced may be regarded as dubious or contrived to beat the deadline; the more appropriate assessment would be whether the company at the relevant time perceived that no further approval of allotments could be made upon the election dates being declared. It is the inescapable inference that may be drawn from the conduct of the company in the days leading up to February 28, 2011, that its chairman perceived that further allotment of plots could not be approved or the approval intimated to the allottees after the election dates were declared. There is no dispute that except for the issuance of a solitary letter of intimation on March 1, 2011, the letters of intimation in all other subject cases, whether under the chairman's discretionary quota or by the board, were issued on or a few days prior to February 28, 2011.
231. The company's supplementary affidavit in WP 5158(W) of 2013 has indicated the rationale of cancelling some of the allotments made under the chairman's discretionary quota while not proceeding against the others. For non- residential allotments, cancellation has been effected in only those cases where the offers of allotment (those letters which identified and demarcated the plots and indicated the schedule for payment therefor) were issued after February 28, 2011; and in case of residential plots, where the letters of intimation were issued on February 28, 2011. Paragraph 17 of such supplementary affidavit has specified that other than the four allottees identified therein by name, the allotments of all other non-residential plots where firm offers of allotment were issued after February 28, 2011 have been cancelled. Of the four exceptions, the deeds of conveyance relating to two of them were executed by the beginning of November, 2011, prior to any letter of cancellation being issued to them. In the two other cases, the allotments were not cancelled because the allettees had already applied to this court and the matters were sub-judice. Paragraph 15 of the supplementary affidavit indicates that all residential allotments under the chairman's discretionary quota where letters of intimation were issued on February 28, 2012 have been cancelled except the seven allottees mentioned therein. In the cases of Abhijit Saha and Dipak Kumar Bhattacharya, the possession of the relevant plot was made over in April and May, 2011, respectively. In the other five cases, the allottees had filed petitions and cancellation of the allotments had not been effected in deference to the matters being in court. Some of the petitioners have referred to a further exception being carved out by the company for one Rajiv Kumar in that the cancellation of his allotment was under reconsideration. The company has made a categorical statement in court which has been recorded in an order of May 5, 2015 that the cancellation of the allotment in favour of Rajiv Kumar is final and the matter will not be reconsidered. Thus, it would be evident that a cut-off date has been chosen by the company in either case and the decision to cancel the allotments made on the basis of such cut-off date is without exception, save what was beyond the control of the company. The company has also submitted that it has instituted civil suits against Balaji Enterprise, the respondent No.16 in the lead petition, and against Alo Eye Care Private Ltd and that it will pursue such actions diligently. In respect of the residential allotments made in favour of Abhijit Saha and Dipak Kumar Bhattacharya, it appears that they were favoured citizens under the previous management of the company since they obtained possession of their plots before the change of guard at Writers' Building or the effect of such change trickled down to the HIDCO headquarters. The petitioners have not been able to cite the instance of any other allottee who may have been covered by the decision of the company for cancellation of allotment, but has not been proceeded against. Contrary to what the petitioners suggest, the company has not resorted to picking and choosing a few for harsh treatment on an imaginary classification.
232. Despite the unrelenting rumblings of the rejected allottees as to the basis and manner of classification, there appears to have been both reason and rationale in the company choosing where the axe would fall. Once it is appreciated that the alarming trend of allotments towards the end of the tenure of the previous regime justified a revisit of the circumstances in which allotment of plots in New Town were made, any decision to cancel the allotments on the grounds of impropriety would have required a cut-off date or a classification unless all the allottees were similarly circumstanced. The company has said that it was slightly stricter in dealing with improper allotments of non-residential plots than in residential plots since non-residential plots lend themselves to be exploited more for commercial gains. There is sound logic in making a distinction between non-residential and residential allotments and it may have been irrational if it was not so done. As to the cut-off date of February 28, 2011 in either case, it would be evident that the company chose the last possible date without being vindictive and cancelling all the allotments under the discretionary quota by disregarding any distinction between those who may have already taken steps upon obtaining title or possession or both of their allotted lands and those who had not got title or possession.
233. The ancillary question which arises is that whether another cut-off date could have been chosen or the distinction between who to proceed against and who not to proceed against could have been otherwise than as decided by the company. When the propriety of a cut-off date or the manner of classification is called into question it may, more often than not, appear that another date or another set of criteria may have been equally or more efficaciously chosen. It is here that the court should realise the bounds of its authority and eschew usurping the administrative decision-making function unless it is demonstrated that the impugned cut-off date or the classification was not based on intelligible differentia or that the same had no nexus with the object of the exercise. It would not do for a court to discredit the impugned cut-off date or classification merely because another, probably better, was possible: for that would be taking upon the burden of administration; the test in such a case would be whether that which has been chosen is mala fide or demonstrably erroneous on the twin benchmarks of intelligible differentia and nexus with the object of the decision.
234. The facts as they have unfolded may have justified the cancellation of all or most of the allotments in New Town made under the chairman's discretionary quota, but that may have been too sweeping. In such a scenario an allottee who had built upon an allotted land would have been treated on the same footing as an allottee who may not have obtained possession of the land or title thereto; and the rationale could have been seriously doubted. Except for a solitary case where the company has sought to repossess the plot for non-use, the company's decision to cancel the allotments is restricted to such allottees who have neither obtained title nor possession of the plots allotted and, in some cases, who have not even been made firm offers of allotment by identification of any plot. The facts undeniably demonstrate that the process of allotment of plots in New Town, both by the board and under the chairman's discretionary quota, was unfair, irrational and otherwise improper. Once such position is established, it cannot be said that merely because the company had informed some of the applicants that their allotments had been approved or even the formal offers of allotment were issued, the process could not be revisited or reviewed. The company had due authority to cancel any allotment if it reasonably perceived the process to have been improper. Merely because the company has chosen a cut-off date which allows some of the other unworthy allottees to retain their allotments, it cannot be said that no action could have been taken by the company despite discovering the colossal irregularity in the process. Article 14 of the Constitution does not operate in a negative sense. Just because another citizen has got away with a wrong does not imply that the next wrong-doer has also to be let off.
235. Some of the petitioners have argued that in the company perceiving all the allotments made under the chairman's discretionary quota to be improper but proceeding against only a few, it has sought to put its imprimatur of propriety on the other perceived improper allotments. Such argument does not appeal. Just as the State or an instrumentality of the State must be guarded and informed in conferring a benefit to a person; once the benefit has been conferred, the State or instrumentality is obliged to exercise greater caution and restraint in recalling or undoing the benefit conferred. The doctrine of proportionality or even the test of reasonableness would make a distinction between two unworthy recipients of State largesse depending on the extent of the activities undertaken by the two recipients in pursuance of the grant. Say, for instance, two persons were improperly allotted and given possession of parcels of land by the State on freehold basis and one of them proceeded to transfer the same; it may not then be possible for the State to divest the transferee of his property if he had acquired it in good faith upon satisfying himself of the title of his vendor. But the fact that the State cannot undo the improper grant to the one may not stand in the way of the State recalling the allotment improperly made to the other allottee.
236. While it is acknowledged that these petitions have not come by way of any public interest litigation, yet it cannot be forgotten that the exercise of authority under Article 226 of the Constitution is primarily in public interest. As several authoritative pronouncements, including the judgment reported at (2013) 5 SCC 427 (Rajasthan State Industrial Development and Investment Corporation v. Subhash Sindhi Cooperative Housing Society), instruct, the primary purpose in this jurisdiction is to protect and establish rights and to impose a corresponding imperative duty existing in law. The issuance of high prerogative writs by the superior courts in this country is designed to promote justice and its grant or refusal is at the discretion of the court. Such discretion is exercised by taking into consideration a wide variety of circumstances, including the facts of the case, the exigency that warrants the exercise of the discretion, the consequences of the grant or the refusal of the writ and the nature and extent of the injury that is likely to ensue by such grant or its refusal. The discretion has to be exercised on the considerations of public policy, public interest and public good. The authority to issue a writ is equitable in nature and governed by the principles of equity. The issuance of a writ may be refused on grounds that lead to injustice:
the prime consideration for the issuance of a writ is whether substantial justice will be promoted. It is possible that if only one of the petitions fell for consideration and the facts pertaining to the other matters were not before the court, the court may have been slow in allowing reasons not referred to in the notice of cancellation to have been cited in support of the cancellation. Even then it would have been possible for the company to rely on the facts that have come to light in course of the present proceedings to ask the court to see the relevant letter of cancellation in the context of the larger perspective. But now that the five dozen or so matters throw up facts which demolish the sanctity of the process of allotment of plots in New Town, none of the petitions can be seen only on the basis of the acts complained of therein; all the petitions have to be seen as part of a process that indisputably reveals itself as flawed and arbitrary. The only limitation, while passing an order appropriate on these petitions, is that specific directions in respect of other allotments that do not form the subject-matter of the present proceedings may not be issued, though some observation in such regard may be unavoidable.
237. Now that the deck has been cleared to look into the allotments in these cases and not merely the immediate actions of the company that have been called into question, it calls for a reference to some of the matters to appreciate the factual aspects in appropriate perspective. It is clear from the guidelines adopted by the company for allotment of plots under the chairman's discretionary quota both for non-residential and residential plots, that certain rudimentary but intelligible criteria had been set for the applications to be considered in the light of the same. The guidelines laid down the considerations which would form the basis for the exercise of the chairman's discretion. It would, therefore, be expected that each application would be assessed as to whether it conformed to the criteria indicated in the guidelines. That is not to suggest that one or two allotments not conforming to the guidelines may not have been approved by the chairman upon indicating cogent grounds for exercise of his extraordinary discretion; but, by and large, approvals could be granted only if the applications were worthy on the yardstick set out in the guidelines. It is evident that there was no application of mind in taking up any application for consideration or even in the approval thereof for allotment.
238. It is possible that a particular high-level functionary is conferred the discretion and, by virtue of the high position that he holds, he does not have the requisite time to consider all applications with toothcomb meticulousness. Such authority may then delegate the fact-finding exercise to another or to a set of persons and call for a report. If the material relevant for the assessment is evident from the report and the high official is found to have endorsed the same, he would have sufficiently discharged the obligation attendant to the exercise of his discretion. But in this case, the two relevant committees expressed no opinion at all other than one finding all but a few to be considered for allotment and the other approving all for consideration. Apart from the fact that the relevant material raises justifiable doubts as to whether these committees met at all or whether they considered any application or that the applications had even been filed when these committees appear to have deliberated thereon, neither set of minutes reveals the application of any mind to the matters that ought to have been considered. As a consequence, the chairman could no longer approve any application for allotment without undertaking a detailed assessment by taking relevant considerations into account in the light of the guidelines. After all, there were 829 applications for non-residential plots (849 less 20 apparently found ineligible by the relevant committee) and there had to be some basis why only a few of them ended up successful and the others not. Similarly, when the relevant committee looking into applications for residential plots approved all 835 cases, there ought to have been some basis for approving a few and not the rest. If the chairman had proceeded to approve the allotments according to any alphabetical order or the dates of the applications or such other discernable basis, even the facile exercise that he undertook may have got the benefit of the doubt. But when the chairman chose a few to confer largesse on, the process had to be transparent and fair; which it does not appear to have been. Indeed, the letters of intimation issued to the approved applicants for non-residential plots demanded the project reports to be submitted. That would imply that there was no assessment of the applications on the basis of the criteria recognised in the guidelines. In the case of approval of residential allotments, the note of the officer on special duty in respect of the approval accorded by the chairman on February 28, 2011 to 59 applicants specified that the allotment would be "subject to fulfilling eligibility condition." If even the eligibility of the applicants were not considered, there was no sanctity to the process.
239. Most of the applications for allotment appear to be dubious and several are demonstrably false or had been ante-dated. It is strange that a substantial number of the petitioners herein puts up received copies of applications bearing a questioned rubber-stamp and the alleged signature thereon of a solitary employee of the company. It is intriguing that though several of the petitioners have relied on copies of other letters received by the company, none of such other letters carries the dubious rubber-stamp that many of the petitioners have sought to rely on to demonstrate that their applications had been lodged with the company. At least three of the companies that had allegedly applied for allotment of non-residential plots in New Town had not even been incorporated on the date that they claim to have applied therefor. In all three cases the concerned companies were incorporated several months or years after the last date passed for receiving applications for the allotment of non-residential plots in New Town.
Several other applicants for non-residential allotments appear to have referred to facts in future, if the dates appearing on their applications are to be given any credence. Most curiously, many of the petitions do not carry copies of the applications for allotment or rely on printed applications for allotment which are undated or where the date is written in hand. As to the rejected allottees of residential plots, several of the applications refer to "New Town Police Station" or to "Jyoti Basu Nagar" years before such police station was set up or New Town was sought to be renamed. Many of the residential applications that fall for consideration are also either undated or carry hand-written dates or are in a similar form. It is unnatural that so many anomalies appear in the applications for allotment of plots. The only logical inference is that the process was undertaken on the basis of extraneous considerations and the related documents have been fabricated or manufactured to try and window-dress the process as authentic.
240. Three of the petitioners pertaining to non-residential plots admittedly applied well beyond time. At least three of the petitions pertaining to residential allotments also reveal that the applications for allotment were made long after the time specified in the relevant advertisement had expired. It is possible that in an odd case, a conscious extension of time is granted on relevant considerations or the extension does not prejudice any other applicant. However, it would be evident from the list of 849 applicants for non-residential plots and the list of 835 applicants for residential plots that a majority of the applications were not taken up for consideration by the chairman. Apart from the fact that there is nothing which indicates why some applications were taken up for consideration and others not, the chairman owed a duty to all the applicants to consider the applications on a level-playing field. If all the applicants had been allotted plots and some late applicants also accommodated, there would be no cause for complaint; but when several of the applicants are shown in the list to have applied within time but other applications which, according to the relevant applicants, were filed much later than the last dates therefor and the dates ascribed to such applications in the list, the entire process is vitiated. In fact, the facts as noticed in the discussion pertaining to the individual mattes would reveal that several of the applications could not have been before the committees set up to scrutinise the same.
241. The sanctity of a process is destroyed if even a solitary instance is shown that would cast a doubt on the date on which the process is shown to have been undertaken. There are instances galore which lead to the inevitable conclusion that the minutes of the two committees which met to approve the residential and non-residential applications on May 24, 2007 and April 28, 2008, respectively, were fabricated and brought into existence as a part of a charade to cloak a dubious process with contrived authenticity. The facts lead to the inescapable inference that the entire process of approving or granting allotment of plots under the chairman's discretionary quota was a sham and that the exercise of discretion was arbitrary, at variance with the guidelines set therefor and otherwise opposed to public interest and contrary to public policy.
242. In an article entitled Reasonableness in Administrative Discretion: A Formal Model by P. L. M. Lucatuorto [(2010) J. Juris 633], the author propounds that the term "discretion" has at least five uses in administrative law: the authority to make individualising decisions in the application of general rules or "individualising discretion"; the freedom in filling gaps in delegated authority in order to execute assigned administrative functions or "executing discretion"; the power to take action to further societal goals or "policy-making discretion"; if no review is permitted the agency exercises "unbridled discretion" and, if the decision cannot by it very nature be reviewed, the agency exercises "numinous discretion". According to the proposition canvassed in the article, different judicial considerations flow from such distinction and only the first three of the types of discretion are subject to review by courts on either the test of arbitrariness or the test of abuse of discretion. However, the Supreme Court of Canada in a judgment reported at (1959) SCR 121 (Roncarelli v. Duplessis) held, by a majority opinion with one in disagreement, that in public regulation "there is no such thing as absolute and untrammeled 'discretion', that is that action can be taken on any ground or for any reason that can be suggested to the mind of the administrator; no legislative Act can, without express language, be taken to contemplate an unlimited arbitrary power exercisable for any purpose, however capricious or irrelevant, regardless of the nature of the statute." The context in which such observation was made may be seen in brief. Members of the cult of Jehovah's Witnesses went from door to door in Montreal in the 1940s seeking converts. The State wanted them off the streets and the police arrested several for selling magazines without licence. The cult challenged the peddling bye-laws. The arrested members would have remained in jail as the challenge to the bye-laws remained pending in the courts, but for a restaurateur with deep pockets who bailed the members out on each occasion. The Prime Minister of the province directed the liquor commission to cancel the liquor licence of the benefactor. In the action that followed, the State cited the liquor control legislation that permitted the commission to "cancel any permit at its discretion"; but the majority view adhered to the principle that even if no limits on a discretionary power are stated in the legislation that confers it, the law subjects the power to limits.
243. In the chapter entitled "Discretion and deference" in Administrative Law by Timothy Endicott (OUP; 2ed), the author refers to three principal reasons for allocating power to an administrative body: expertise; political responsibility; and, effective processes. The same grounds are indicated as reasons for a court to defer to the authority of an administrative body and its exercise of discretion; with an additional reason: the fact that the law has allocated the power to an administrative body. The chapter is prefaced with the following wise words:
"The common law controls the substance of administrative decisions, through the doctrine of abuse of power. The point of the doctrine is to promote responsible government. If a court is to control other public authorities, it has to do so with comity. The challenge of comity is to work out the difference between an arbitrary decision (which the judges should remedy), and a bad decision (which may be none of the judges' business)."
244. Celebrated judgments of the Supreme Court, from Ramana Dayaram Shetty (supra) through Capt. Satish Sharma (supra) and to Platinum Entertainment (supra), instruct that it must be taken to be the law that in the matter of grant of largesse, the State must act in a fair and just manner and any arbitrary distribution of wealth would violate the law of the land. If a minister of the Union was regarded to be "in a position of a trustee in respect of the public property under his charge and discretion", a minister in a State government has to be seen as charged with the same obligation and responsibility. If the role of the concerned minister in Capt. Satish Sharma prompted the Supreme Court to refer to "a tort which has been called misfeasance in public office and which includes malicious abuse of power, deliberate mal-administration, and perhaps also other unlawful acts causing injury", the manner in which allotment of plots were made in New Town under the previous dispensation, particularly under the chairman's discretionary quota, invites the same reference.
245. In an ideal situation, equality of opportunity would be if everyone is impartially situated as equals. In the real world, everyone is not similarly placed. For social justice or distributive justice to be brought about by reconciling liberty and equality in a principled manner, there has to be an element of discretion in distributing State largesse. Since the political executive has an accountability to the legislature and consequently, to the people, the political executive does have the mandate to exercise discretion in how best to distribute land, licence, permits and the like. In judicial review of any impugned distribution of State largesse, the court may not say that it could have been done better or that a different set of parameters ought to have been applied therefor. Whether on Wednesbury reasonableness or on the basis of the doctrine of proportionality, the court will assess whether the process was fair or in furtherance of the object of the exercise. It is found in this case that only some of the applicants under the chairman's discretionary quota were selected for approval without even a rational basis for picking out some and leaving out the others. Even the allotments made by the board of the company on February 28, 2011 were not on any rational basis but on the purported recommendation of a committee that is shown to have met long after the board meeting on the same day had commenced and whose purported recommendations were approved by the board apparently on the same day. As to the board allotments, it is true that all the applications that were made to the board may have been approved, but government land cannot be distributed without relevant considerations being taken into account. The paramount consideration may not necessarily have been the best price possible, for government cannot be seen to be driven by profit motive even though such profits may be channelled to programmes for the less privileged citizens. But if the board was to allot plots on the basis of applications and not by invitation, it should have advertised therefor and not have exposed itself to an inference that it may have engineered the applications to allot plots to favourites.
246. It is understandable that when a particular township is developed, the presence of the amenities thereat has to be ensured to attract people to come there; but that has to be done in a thought-out, planned manner and not on the basis of any accidental or engineered application for setting up facilities or amenities that may make the township attractive. If the government felt that office or commercial hubs or motor garages or markets were also necessary for residents to be attracted to the township, it could have invited applications for commercial use in several categories and chosen a reasonable process, whether by auction or even invitation, to set up such facilities. In any event, publication of advertisements in a self-professed mouthpiece of a political party as Ganashakti and a little-known and much less read English newspaper as The Echo of India cannot be regarded as a bonafide method of giving wide publicity for applications for allotment of commercial plots in New Town; and it appears to have been more of a token compliance with the requirement in judicial pronouncements in such regard. The manner in which the allotment of plots in New Town has been made, other than by way of lottery, seems to be arbitrary from the beginning to the end.
247. Take, for instance, the day that was February 28, 2011 at the offices of HIDCO. At 12 noon the 59th meeting of the board of directors of the company commenced in the conference room at its then registered office in the Salt Lake Stadium Complex. It was attended by the minister-chairman, the managing director, the joint managing director and 11 other directors. Eight other officials were present at the meeting by invitation. The company secretary was also in attendance. The minutes show 38 items of business transacted thereat. The minutes were prepared on the same day or by the next day if the chairman's signature with the date of March 1, 2011 is to be believed. On February 28, 2011 a committee constituted at the board meeting of the same day met at 6 pm under the chairmanship of one of the directors of the company. Of the two other members of such committee, one was the managing director of the company. The company secretary of the company was also in attendance at the meeting of the committee. The committee is supposed to have "scrutinized/analysed" eight applications for setting up medical facilities in New Town and approved all of them. Since the minutes of the 59th board meeting do not record that any of the directors or the company secretary left such board meeting to attend any other meeting, it is safe to assume that the board meeting had concluded prior to the board-appointed committee meeting at 6 pm on the same day. Yet, the recommendation of the committee appears to have been approved in the minutes of the board meeting held earlier on the same day. Apart from the board meeting and the committee meeting held on such day, 42 letters of intimation of non- residential plots (27 board allottees and 15 allottees under the chairman's discretionary quota) were issued to the relevant applicants by the company on February 28, 2011. A further 60 letters of intimation were issued to the relevant applicants for residential plots on the same day. In addition, sometime earlier during such busy day the chairman considered 59 applications for allotment of residential plots and approved them. The chairman's signature and the date of February 28, 2011 appear on the two sets of documents in such regard. After the chairman approved the 59 applications, a more formal note was prepared by his officer on special duty and forwarded to the managing director of the company on the same day. The relevant four-page document bears the signature of the officer on special duty and the date of February 28, 2011. The chairman also had time to approve at least three allotments in the non-residential category under his discretionary quota. If the time taken for the considerable deliberations that the board-appointed committee had to undertake to assess the applications for setting up medical facilities in New Town is taken into account, it was very late in the day and well beyond usual working hours when the board of directors of the company must have considered the recommendations of the committee before it approved the same. Without going into the nicety of how letters of allotment bearing the date of February 28, 2011 could have been issued to the applicants who wished to set up medical facilities in New Town when the board minutes approving the allotments in their favour were signed only on March 1, 2011, it would have been very late in the evening when the last of the letters of intimation pertaining to such allotments could be prepared. It appears to have been a day well spent at HIDCO, except that there does not appear to have been any comparable level of activity on any previous or later occasion.
248. In the supplementary affidavit filed by the company in WP 5158(W) of 2013 there is an initial list containing the names of 111 allotess of non-residential plots in New Town under the chairman's discretionary quota. The approval of such allotments and the issuance of the firm offers of allotment in the first 11 cases appear to have been completed by November, 2010. In respect of the first ten allottees the deeds of conveyance had already been executed and possession of the relevant plots handed over to the allottees. The 11th name in such list is that of the petitioner company in WP 22170(W) of 2012 where the new management of the company proposed merely to alter the freehold allotment to leasehold basis, which has been challenged by the allottee. It has now been discovered that the petitioner company in such matter had not been incorporated on the date it is shown to have applied for the allotment and HIDCO's submission has been recorded above that it is now proposed to altogether cancel this allotment. All allotments made in favour of the allottees whose names appear against serial number 12 onwards have been or are intended to be cancelled except for Balaji Enterprise and Alo Eye Care Private Ltd in the circumstances noticed above. All the allottees whose names appear in the list from serial number 12 onwards were issued the firm offers of allotment after February 28, 2011. The distinction made by the company between the two groups of allottees of non-residential plots on the basis of title and possession passing to some and not to others is in order and does not call for any criticism or interference, particularly since the company has indicated its stand in respect of the allottee against serial no. 11 and against Balaji Enterprise and Alo Eye Care Private Ltd. It may have been open to the new management of the company to even proceed against the other allottees of non-residential plots in New Town who had already obtained title or possession; but the fact that the company has not chosen such option, is not enough to undo the reasonable classification that it made in this category. However, it is left to the company and its discretion if it wishes to proceed against all the other allottees of non-residential plots under the chairman's discretionary quota since the entire procedure is found to be faulty, arbitrary and opposed to public policy.
249. For a long time it remained a mystery as to why two lists of residential allottees under the discretionary quota had been appended to the company's supplementary affidavit in WP 5158(W) of 2013. Queries to the respondent authorities in course of the final hearing did not elicit any response beyond the assertion that both lists appended to such supplementary affidavit pertained to residential allotments under the chairman's discretionary quota. It is only on the final day of the hearing that the mystery has been unravelled following a vain attempt on the part of some of the rejected residential allottees to discredit the list pertaining to applications for residential allotments appended to the minutes of the meeting of the relevant committee held on May 24, 2007. It was sought to be urged on behalf of some of the rejected allottees of residential plots that the present management of the company had manufactured the document that contained the particulars of the 835 applications for allotment of various categories of residential plots in New Town. In course of such endeavour, it was submitted on behalf of some of the petitioners pertaining to the residential allotments that the relevant list could not have been taken up for consideration by the relevant committee on May 24, 2007 since a number of the applicants listed therein had already been allotted plots by then. What emerged from the exercise conducted on behalf of the relevant petitioners was that the names of the early allottees of residential plots (prior to May 24, 2007) were only from the list euphemistically referred to in the supplementary affidavit as "special quota". The names in such list indicate several "special" persons, with many of such allotments apparently approved in 2005 and 2006. Thus, it is evident that even before the facile exercise of referring the residential applications to a scrutiny committee, a host of prominent citizens or persons in important public positions had already been conferred the grant. There is no doubt that the guidelines pertaining to allotment of residential plots under the chairman's discretionary quota refer to social workers, political workers and eminent persons in various professions being eligible to obtain plots in New Town thereunder; but when certain people in powerful positions and certain eminent personalities are chosen ahead of others of their ilk, motives may be attributed to both the person making the allotment and the allottees unless there is a transparent process with complete disclosure at the relevant point of time. The guidelines do not indicate how any distinction could be made between eminent persons in different fields or persons enjoying like offices. In this case, there does not appear to have been any discernible basis for considering some eminent persons more special than others and allotting plots to them under the "special quota". It is imperative that the powerful or the otherwise eminent who have been allotted residential plots in New Town under the chairman's discretionary quota be also made aware that some of them were regarded more special than the others. In a constitutional democracy governed by the rule of law such allotments call for a probe that may be beyond the scope of the present proceedings.
250. The second and third lists of allottees appended to the said supplementary affidavit disclose names of several persons from judges to politicians, IAS and IPS officers to other former or continuing public servants and sportspersons to other prominent personalities. The arbitrariness with which the allotments under the chairman's discretionary quota was made, unfortunately, betrays the conspiratorial appropriation of State wealth by the modern day uber caste - of those in power. In the absence of any entitlement to State largesse attached to positions in public office, the distribution of government land to public servants or persons exercising public authority has always to be frowned upon. The least that company ought to do, if it does not proceed against the other allottees of individual plots under any discretionary quota, is to prominently publish on its website and make a public disclosure in at least two leading newspapers of the names of all the allottees of residential plots under any discretionary quota together with the designation of the allottees who may be continuing in office and the last-held posts of the allottees who have demitted office. But the distinction made between those allottees whose letters of allotment of residential plots were issued on February 28, 2011 and those whose letters were issued prior thereto cannot be said to be unjustified or without basis since no further letters of intimation appear to have been issued to any applicant for a residential plot after February 28, 2011. This will, however, not prevent the company from taking any reasonable action against the allottees of residential plots under any discretionary quota who were issued the letters of intimation prior to February 28, 2011.
251. The manner in which discretion was exercised by the company or its erstwhile chairman in approving or allotting plots in New Town does not leave room for the justification of any of the allotments that have fallen for consideration in the present proceedings. Indeed, the functioning of the company during the relevant point of time appears to have been on the writ of its minister- chairman. It is difficult to imagine that the other officials of the company, including the other directors, could have acted independently or carried a view that may not have been in tune with the chairman's. In such context, two lines of argument canvassed on behalf of several of these petitioners do not appeal. There is no legal mandate that a decision approved by the chairman of a government company cannot be recalled or undone by a subsequent decision of a lesser officer of the company. In either case, the decision is that of the company as a chairman of a company is usually the chairman of the board of directors of the company and, ordinarily, no chairman has such authority that the majority directors of the company cannot override. Further, the actions taken or proposed to be taken against these petitioners have been endorsed and deemed to have been ratified by the company in it filing affidavits in support of such actions. A further contention, needlessly raised by some of the petitioners, that the decision to cancel the allotments in their favour is in excess of the relevant resolution passed at the 70th meeting of the board of directors of the company held on December 1, 2012, is equally fallacious. The decision reflected in the minutes of such board meeting was in furtherance of the decisions taken by the board at its earlier meetings, including at the adjourned 60th meeting on August 19, 2011 and at the 61st meeting on October 22, 2011 and not in derogation thereof. At any rate, the letters of cancellation or the proposed steps to cancel the relevant allotments - whether or not the names of the relevant allottees were included in the charts appended to the notes pertaining to the 61st board meeting of the company of October 22, 2011 - have been endorsed and ratified by the subsequent conduct of the company and its filing of affidavits in the present proceedings, including the supplementary affidavit affirmed by its present chairman-cum-managing director in WP 5158(W) of 2013.
252. In the light of the factual position that has emerged in course of the present proceedings, none of the allotments made in favour of the petitioners appears to be beyond question or on the basis of any rational exercise of discretion or by way of any fair procedure. The facts show that the erstwhile chairman of the company vainly perceived that he had unfettered discretion to make allotment of plots to whoever he pleased without assigning any reasons or without reference to the guidelines. The discretion was exercised in a most capricious, inequitable and feudal manner. There was no basis in the choice of the beneficiaries from among many and the manner of exercise of discretion does not satisfy the tests laid down by high judicial authorities.
253. Two of the petitions carry applications that have either outserved their purpose or have worked themselves out in course of the final hearing. CAN 6406 of 2014 in the lead petition, WP 2522(W) of 2014, for supply of various documents, stands disposed of without any further order. CAN 9338 of 2012 in WP 4575(W) of 2012 has become meaningless in the light of the judgment above.
254. WP 2522(W) of 2014, WP 37304(W) of 2013, WP 5158(W) of 2013, WP 2531(W) of 2012, WP 28365(W) of 2013, WP 30170(W) of 2013, WP 4737(W) of 2014, WP 3162(W) of 2014, WP 2565(W) of 2014, WP 2521(W) of 2014, WP 2523(W) of 2014, WP 36986(W) of 2013, WP 6011(W) of 2014, WP 36271(W) of 2013, WP 4574(W) of 2012, WP 6440(W) of 2014, WP 21411(W) of 2013, WP 3132(W) of 2012, WP 7746(W) of 2012, WP 7752(W) of 2012, WP 3171(W) of 2012, WP 22170(W) of 2012, WP 24721(W) of 2012, WP 9162(W) of 2014, WP 1992(W) of 2014, WP 8059(W) of 2012, WP 7084(W) of 2012, WP 2395(W) of 2014, WP 21310(W) of 2011, WP 3816(W) of 2012, WP 4903(W) of 2012, WP 4325(W) of 2014, WP 30078(W) of 2013, WP 13956(W) of 2014, WP 27109(W) of 2014, WP 7468(W) of 2014, WP 65(W) of 2014, WP 67(W) of 2014, WP 68(W) of 2014, WP 70(W) of 2014, WP 37136(W) of 2013, WP 5562(W) of 2014, WP 5566(W) of 2014, WP 2735(W) of 2014, WP 2558(W) of 2014, WP 34290(W) of 2013, WP 224(W) of 2014, WP 5550(W) of 2012, WP 23157(W) of 2012, WP 4470(W) of 2012, WP 13996(W) of 2013, WP 3245(W) of 2012, WP 12617(W) of 2012, WP 36084(W) of 2013, WP 27353(W) of 2013, WP 2569(W) of 2014, WP 929(W) of 2014, WP 5655(W) of 2014, WP 25416(W) of 2012, WP 5988(W) of 2014 and WP 22158(W) of 2011 are dismissed and the impugned action, including the letters of cancellation issued by the company, and proposed action of cancellation of the allotments by the company are left undisturbed and not interfered with. In the facts of the case, there will be no order as to costs.
255. The concluding thought is as to the adverse impact of the lack of probity in public life which leads to a high degree of corruption. Corruption may not necessarily imply the acceptance of illegal gratification: for when there is political patronage or any form of favouritism or nepotism where the beneficiary of State largesse is chosen not on the character of his application but on other considerations as to his conduct or allegiance, the faith in the system as a whole is shaken and there is a revulsion to conform to order in society. As much as this decision may be used for political mileage, those in office today must remember that they will be judged on the same basis. As a parting thought, one can do no better than repeat the words of the Supreme Court in the Jain Hawala case [(1998) 1 SCC 226 (Vineet Narain v. Union of India)] after quoting from Lord Nolan's Report of 1995 on "Standards in Public Life":
"55. These principles of public life are of general application in every democracy and one is expected to bear them in mind while scrutinising the conduct of every holder of a public office. It is trite that the holders of public offices are entrusted with certain powers to be exercised in public interest alone and, therefore, the office is held by them in trust for the people. Any deviation from the path of rectitude by any of them amounts to a breach of trust and must be severely dealt with instead of being pushed under the carpet. If the conduct amounts to an offence, it must be promptly investigated and the offender against whom a prima facie case is made out should be prosecuted expeditiously so that the majesty of law is upheld and the rule of law vindicated. It is the duty of the judiciary to enforce the rule of law and, therefore, to guard against erosion of the rule of law."
256. Certified website copies of this judgment, if applied for, be urgently made available to the parties, subject to compliance with all requisite formalities.
(Sanjib Banerjee, J.) Later:
Some of the petitioners seek a stay of the operation of the order without specifying the relevant petitions. Such prayer is unhesitatingly declined.
(Sanjib Banerjee, J.)