By IANS
Lucknow : The Allahabad High Court Thursday stopped the Uttar Pradesh government from reserving commercial plots for MPs, legislators and government officials as had been the practice for more than a decade.
In a landmark order, a two-judge bench of Justices Pradeep Kant and S.N. Shukla directed development authorities of the state to discontinue the practice of allocating a quota of commercial plots for the privileged.
Issuing an interim order, the Lucknow bench of the high court lambasted the state government for allowing such a practice.
“Let me know under what provision of the constitution you started this practice and what social objective was being fulfilled through this reservation,” Justice Kant curtly asked the government counsel.
The government failed to give any concrete logic for the custom, which the court felt was “bound to breed corruption”.
The issue was raised in a petition moved by an individual who had been denied allotment simply because certain commercial plots had been given to VIPs under the quota system.
In a scathing observation, the judge said: “I fail to understand the logic behind reserving expensive commercial plots to MPs, MLAs and even government officials above the age of 50 years. I am sure that none of these, specially government officials, would have legitimate financial capability to purchase a commercial plot.”
He went on to say: “By reserving such expensive plots for government officials, the government appears to be going on the presumption that by the time they turned 50 they would have acquired enough wealth through unlawful means, otherwise how would they be in a position to even think of purchasing commercial property?”
State Additional Advocate General Jaideep Narain Mathur simply pleaded that the reservation had been going on since 1994 through an official circular then issued by the government. This was supplemented by yet another circular in 1996.
The court gave the government three weeks to file a counter-affidavit and also restrained it from making any further reservations until the petition was disposed of.