Madras High Court quashes TNHB order cancelling alternative accommodation to tenants

The bench also took a strong objection to the government relaxing rules while making house allotments. If relaxation has been made in favour of a person, the government should justify the same.
Madras High Court (File Photo | EPS)
Madras High Court (File Photo | EPS)

NEW DELHI: THE Madras High Court has set aside an order, dated February 11 this year, of the TNHB, which cancelled alternative accommodation in Thirumangalam flats provided to a set of tenants in Todhunter Nagar, Saidapet.
The orders passed by the executive engineer and ADO, CIT Nagar, Redevelopment Works Division, Tamil Nadu Housing Board, all dated February 11, are set aside, the bench of Justices T S Sivagnanam and V Bhavani Subbaroyan said.

The bench was dismissing a batch of writ appeals and petitions challenging the orders of a single judge passed in December last year. The government needed the land for construction of over 6,000 tenements under various schemes and phases in the Todhunter Nagar.
The bench granted time till April 30 to the appellants, who are government servants and tenants in Todhunter Nagar, to shift to the alternative accommodation at Thirumangalam. 
If they fail to do so, the benefit of this order will no more help them and the cancellation of allotment of alternative accommodation dated February 11 and other similar orders will automatically stand reviewed. The government/TNHB may allot the same to other government servants, who are wait-listed for accommodation, the judges said, adding that the authorities are entitled to dispossessing of them and if necessary with the police help.

“Though the conduct of the appellants did not convince us to extend any sympathy, we are concerned about their families and the children. While we deprecate the attitude of the government servants who refused to accept the alternative accommodation and while holding that the government/TNHB cannot be faulted for having cancelled the same on February 11 last after having waited for one year, we feel that if they are not extended the benefit of alternative accommodation, they will be put to prejudice,” the bench said.

Therefore, considering the peculiar facts and circumstances of the case, the bench said that it was setting aside the order of cancellation of alternative accommodation vide the February 11 and other similar orders granting alternative accommodation to the government servants who were granted allotment under the TNGRHS and permit them to occupy the flats at Thirumangalam, the bench added.

The bench also took a strong objection to the government relaxing rules while making house allotments. If relaxation has been made in favour of a person, the government should justify the same. No policy or rule or conditions of allotment have been placed nor it has been shown that the government under any such rule, regulation or executive instruction has power to relax the conditions. Even assuming such power vests with the government, the exercise of such power should be shown to be just and reasonable and the order should explicitly state as to what weighed in the minds of the government to grant relaxation and issue orders of allotment. 

“No such reasons have been mentioned in the GOs. Thus, it is clear that there has been arbitrary exercise of power in favour of those allottees, who appeared to be a chosen few and the reasons are best known to the authority who granted such relaxation,” the bench added.

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