State and its agencies and instrumentalities cannot give largesse such as allotment of land to any person at will and whims of political entities or officers showing favouritism, the Supreme Court has held.
A Bench of Justices M.Y. Eqbal and Pinaki Chandra Ghose said decisions and action of the State must be founded on a sound, transparent and well-defined policy, which should be made known to the public. The disposal of government land by adopting a discriminatory method should be avoided and it should be done in a fair and equitable manner. Writing the judgment, Justice Eqbal said even assuming that if the rule or regulation prescribed the mode of allotment by entertaining individual application or by tenders or competitive bidding, the rule of law required publicity to be given before such allotment was made. Authorities should not adopt pick and choose method. A rational policy of allotting land on the basis of individual applications could not be de hors an invitation or advertisement by the State or its instrumentality, bringing it to the knowledge of public at large so that the eligible persons should not be excluded from lodging their competitive claims.
The City Industrial Development Corporation (CIDCO) in Maharashtra allotted a large extent of land to Platinum Entertainment and two others in 2004, including construction of an entertainment park. However, since certain payment conditions were not complied with, the allotment was cancelled. On a batch of writ petitions, the Bombay High Court quashed the order cancelling allotments. The CIDCO filed the present appeal against this order.
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Allowing the CIDCO’s appeal, the Bench said, “We express our anguish over the way the CIDCO authorities showed undue favour to respondents and managed to allot the government land in favour of one person knowing fully well that the aforesaid proprietor of the company, in different capacity and in dummy names, sought allotment of plots. The CIDCO may take all endeavours to make allotments of plots by open tender or competing bids and should not take any decision for allotment of government land at the instance of ministers and high dignitaries for any purpose whatsoever. We have no hesitation in holding that the CIDCO was justified in cancelling all the allotments made in favour of respondents.”