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2. This petition involves consideration of some of the provisions of three State enactments viz., the Maharashtra Regional and Town Planning Act, 1966, hereinafter referred to as the 1966 Act; the Maharashtra Slum Areas (Improvement, Clearance and Redevelopment) Act, 1971, hereinafter referred to as the 1971 Act, and the Maharashtra Slums Improvement Board Act, 1973, hereinafter referred to as the 1973 Act.

3. Circumstances under which dispute involved in the present petition arose have been as follows. Situated in Poona City were two plots viz., Final Plots Nos. 55 and 56 at Mangalwar Peth. These two plots were amalgamated and on amalgamation, the same were constituted as C. S. No. 449. Mangalwar Peth, Poona, The said property was the ancestral property of respondent No. 1 herein and his uncle. Area of the aforesaid property was divided into eleven sub-plots and in the final decree partition proceedings, sub-plots Nos. 5 to 8, 10 and 11 came to be allotted to the share of respondent No. 1 herein Mahadeo Pandharinath Dhole. This allotted property is the subject-matter of this petition. On 8th July, 1966, the State Government sanctioned a development plan relevant for the purposes of this petition. This development plan was sanctioned under the provisions of Section 31 of the 1966 Act and the same came into effect from 15th August, 1966. Under the said plan, the property in dispute herein stood reserved for a playground.

On the said preliminary issue, the Tribunal returned a negative finding. The Tribunal held that the declaration of the property in question as a slum area under Section 4 (1) of the 1971 Act as amended by the 1973 Act was incapable of being enforced and the said declaration can have no legal effect and consequence in view of the prior reservation of the property for the purposes of a playground under the 1966 Act. In this view of the matter, the Tribunal allowed the appeal of respondent No. 1, set aside the impugned declaration made by the Competent Authority and directed the contesting respondents to pay the costs of the appeal. It is this appellate order of the Tribunal that is challenged in this petition by the State of Maharashtra.

11. The Tribunal is also not right in holding that consequent upon the im-pugned declaration, the property stands converted for a non-public or a private purpose or that it stands converted into a residential site for a private purpose. In this behalf, the legal effect and consequences of the impugned declaration have not been correctly considered and appreciated by the Tribunal. The declaration does not result in con-verting the property of one kind into a property of a different kind. It only declares the property to be a slum area. It does not cancel its reservation in the development plan for a playground. Nor does the declaration prevent the property being ulimately made to fulfil the purpose of the playground in question. It was open to the authorities to declare a particular property to be a slum area, to then declare the same to be a clearance area and to thereafter redevelop the same into a playground for which last purpose the property was reserved in the development plan. Reservation of the property as a playground in the development plan under the 1966 Act does not prevent the same from being declared as a slum area nor is there any bar to providing basic amenities to the slum dwellers on the said property pending finding of alternative sites for rehabilitating them. A temporary phase qua the property in question does not and cannot obliterate the object consequent upon reservation of the property as a playground in the development plan. In our view, declaration as of the instant nature does not nullify or run counter to the development plan in question. Nor does the development plan and the reservation therein of the property in question as a playground prevent or debar the appropriate authority from declaring the same to be a slum area covered by the provisions also of the 1971 and 1973 enactments.