Allahabad High Court
Anuj Pratap Singh vs Union Of India And 02 Others on 19 November, 2019
Bench: Ramesh Sinha, Ajit Kumar
HIGH COURT OF JUDICATURE AT ALLAHABAD ?Court No. - 1 Case :- WRIT - C No. - 37537 of 2019 Petitioner :- Anuj Pratap Singh Respondent :- Union Of India And 02 Others Counsel for Petitioner :- Manish Kumar Nigam Counsel for Respondent :- A.S.G.I. Hon'ble Ramesh Sinha,J.
Hon'ble Ajit Kumar,J.
Sri Anant Kumar Tiwari, learned Advocate, has filed his memo of appearance on behalf of respondent no.1-Union of India today in Court, which is taken on record.
Heard Sri Manish Kumar Nigam, learned counsel for the petitioner, Sri Anant Kumar Tiwari, learned counsel for respondent no.1 Union of India, Sri Vikas Budhwar, learned counsel appearing for the respondents Petroleum Corporation and perused the record.
By means of this writ petition, under Article 226 of the Constitution of India, the petitioner has challenged the order dated 23rd October, 2019 passed by the respondent no.3, whereby the petitioner's candidature for the allotment of distributorship of liquid petroleum gas and a showroom facility has come to be rejected.
The reason assigned under the order impugned is that the petitioner while submitting his application had given offer of land relating to plot No.995 of Village Jangal Kadiya, District Gorkhpur, measuring 41 m x 15 m. The petitioner's application though was positively considered and he was selected but the same land was shown by the three other applicants who had applied pursuant to the same advertisement showing the registered lease deeds of that land in their favour. An enquiry was conducted into the matter and the lessor Adalat Ram, son of Paras had admitted to have executed lease deed not only in favour of the petitioner but in favour of one Priya Singh, D/o Chandra Pratap Singh who had applied vide Application No. 721112018, Anita Singh w/o Chandra Pratap Singh who had applied vide application No.7521112018 and Chandra Pratap Singh son of Bal Govind Singh who had applied vide application No.7112018. The details of the lease deeds have been given in Chart referred to in the order impugned..
The petitioner is also related to Chandrda Pratap Singh who himself had been the applicant besides his wife Anita Singh and daughter Priya Singh. Thus, in respect of the same plot number, three different members of the same family had applied setting up independent claim for distributorship licence. Thus, the respondent competent authority has ultimately concluded that offer of the same land identified by same plot number in respect of three individuals cannot be accepted, if the land is same.
Assailing the order impugned, it has been contended on behalf of the petitioner that every case has to be individually examined and after thorough verification if the application of the petitioner has come to be accepted being a selected candidate, the candidature of the petitioner could not have been rejected on the ground that there were other applicants also who had made offer of plot in respect of the same land. He submits that petitioner had proposed only a part of land of the plot which has a very large area and therefore, respondents were not justified in cancelling the candidature of the petitioner.
Per contra, the argument advanced on behalf of the learned counsel appearing for the respondent Corporation is that the land offered acquires significance when it is on the location advertised at a fixed place or between the two fixed positions and therefore, there cannot be offer of the same land in respect of the same situation/location by three individuals separately. The vendor being the same, he could not have executed lease deed of same position of land to the three different individuals and in any view such a land could not be adjudged to be suitable one.
In order to verify the correctness of the reasons assigned in the order impugned, we examined the lease deed in respect of Anuj Prapap is concerned. The area is given as 15 m x 41 m. i.e., 615 sq. meters but there is no division specific of the holding as on the western side land is shown of one Pal and on the northern side land is shown of the vendor. This lease deed is dated 17.11.2018. The site map which has been prepared if compared with the lease deed of the petitioner, both in the eastern side, western side and southern side, the land should be of the vendor if the vendor is the sole tenure holder of the entire land of plot, but the lease deed of an area of 615 sq. meters executed and registered in favour of the petitioner by the vendor Adalat Ram does not refer to the plot number although the other lease deed dated 17.11.2018 does refer to plot No.1526 within an area of 220 sq. ft. The identification of the land if doubted on the spot, the location advertised, on the one hand or in case if without any proper division of holding three lease deeds are executed in favour of the petitioner by the same vendor all of them have separately applied for the allotment of the distributorship, in our considered opinion, the respondents have not manifestly erred in rejecting the claim of the petitioner. We do not find any manifest error in the order impugned passed by the respondent competent authority. The writ petition lacks merit. It is accordingly, rejected.
(Ajit Kumar,J.) (Ramesh Sinha, J.) Order Date :- 19.11.2019/NS