Chandigarh, January 2: Less than two months after the Punjab and Haryana High Court took a serious view of the wait in the implementation of the self-financing housing scheme for UT employees, the Union Cabinet has approved the proposal to allot land to the Chandigarh Housing Board (CHB), paving the way for the construction of apartments for 3,930 allottees.
The approval came over a decade after the scheme was launched for UT employees. The Centre had earlier submitted that the final note on the proposal to allot 61.5 acres of government land to the CHB had been sent to the Cabinet Secretariat for placing it before the Cabinet at an early date for its decision.
Assistant Solicitor-General of India Chetan Mittal had submitted that the final note for the Cabinet was duly approved by the “competent authority”. A letter dated December 6, 2018, whereby the Cabinet note was forwarded to the Cabinet Secretariat was also placed before the Bench of Justice Mahesh Grover and Justice Lalit Batra on the previous date of hearing. Available information suggests that Chandigarh MP Kiron Kher’s initiative played a role in getting the approval.
The Bench had earlier asked the Union of India to make clear its stand on the proposal sent by the Administration for allocation of land to the housing board. The development had taken place on a petition filed by Phool Kumar Saini and other petitioners against the CHB and another respondent.
The petitioners were seeking directions to the CHB and another respondent to implement the Self-Financing Housing Scheme-2008 on a leasehold basis for 99 years for UT employees.
The court was told that the housing scheme for the employees was launched in February 2008 by the UT. The draw of lots was held on November 4, 2010, and nearly 3,930 employees were successful. However, nothing was apparently done by the CHB. Even acceptance-cum-demand letters were not issued to the successful applicants and “bureaucrats at high level were sleeping over the matter”.
The petitioners had added that the CHB was apparently more interested in providing houses to encroachers. They were getting houses and tenements free of cost as “in all this the CHB gets an opportunity to do bungling”.
On the other hand, the successful applicants like the petitioners having a legitimate right to get a house by making payment as prescribed in the brochure were “left in the doldrums”. The petitioners claimed they were also being “prejudiced against severely”.
