Allahabad High Court Dismisses PIL Seeking Probe Into UP Govt's Jal Jeevan Mission Scheme

The Allahabad High Court last week dismissed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) petition seeking a probe into the alleged financial embezzlement in the implementation of the Uttar Pradesh Government's Jal Jeevan Mission (Har Ghar Nal Se Jal) scheme.

The Bench of Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya and Justice Ajai Kumar Srivastava-I noted that such petitions cause loss of precious judicial time which can be devoted by the courts and all concerned for disposal of long-pending cases.

Importantly, the State Water and Sanitation Mission is the executing agency for implementation of Jal Jeevan Mission (Har Ghar Nal Se Jal) which is a scheme evolved for providing drinking water at village level.

The plea before the Court

The PIL sough a direction commanding the respondent no.4/Comptroller and Auditor General of India to conduct a probe into the alleged financial embezzlement in the implementation of the scheme averring that the State Water and Sanitation Mission selected an agency for the work relating to Third Party Inspection (TPI) which quoted rates higher than the rates of U.P. Jal Nigam for the said purpose. 

Certain other allegations have also been made in the writ petition, such as adopting a pick and choose method for awarding the work and further that award of the said work is dehors the operational guidelines as formulated by the Government of India.

Further, the petitioner also stated that because of the mala fide intention of the officials and for personal gains the work relating to the supply of pipes has been awarded to a company that has been debarred/blacklisted by many States of the country for its substandard quality and deficient services.

The petition was opposed by the State Counsel and the counsel representing the State Water and Sanitation Mission stating that the petition was motivated, misconceived and does not contain any material so as to even point out any irregularity in the award of tender for the work in question.

Court's observations 

At the outset, the Court opined that there cannot any dispute that the public authorities (including the State Water and Sanitation Mission) has to act in the most transparent, fair, and lawful manner and such agency cannot be permitted to be lax in observing the law.

"It is also not in dispute that in case any irregularity or illegality is found being committed by such agency, specially the financial irregularities which ultimately touches upon interest of every individual tax payer in the society, such issues need to be probe to be followed by appropriate permissible legal action," the court added.

However, the Court underscored the necessity to satisfy itself of the bona fide intention of the petitioner and adequate material before it, before any such probe in any public interest litigation is ordered.

Against this backdrop, the Court noted that the PIL had been filed by a real estate/ construction businessman Aditya Mohan Arora and he had placed reliance on the tweets made by AAP MP Sanjay Singh against the state government and thus, the Court observed:

"Reliance placed that the petitioner on the tweets of a political party which have been annexed as Annexure No.5 to the writ petition and the queries made under the Right to Information Act relating to the complaints made by the said political figure and also the fact that the petitioner himself is in real estate/construction business do not convince us to arrive at a conclusion that the petition has been filed for bona fide reasons."

Further, the Court was of the view that the respondents had taken a policy decision with the concurrence of the cabinet of the State Government to get the works executed in Engineering Procurement and Construction (EPC) Mode by open competitive bidding, therefore, the Court added, such policy decision cannot be faulted with for the reason that it exclusively lies in the realm of policy.

The Court also noted that the Executive Director of the scheme had given a reply to the petitioner's representation/application and each and every point raised in the said application was considered and adequate reply had been provided.

"We also notice that the selection, as stated by the Executive Director of respondent no.3 in his letter dated 10.09.2021, of the agency for executing the work has been done in terms of the guidelines/rules contained in the Procurement mannual. The said letter also categorically states that even the rates which have been approved as quoted by the agencies are lower than the rate of U.P. Jal Nigam and that the agency for Third Party Inspection work has been chosen by adhering to open competitive bidding process from amongst the eligible tenderers," the court held.

Lastly, regarding the plea, the Court was of the view that due to such trumpery proceedings initiated before the Courts, innumerable days are wasted, which time otherwise could have been spent for the disposal of cases of the genuine litigants.

"Though we spare no efforts in fostering and developing the laudable concept of PIL and extending our long arm of sympathy to the poor, the ignorant, the oppressed and the needy whose fundamental rights are infringed and violated and whose grievances go unnoticed, unrepresented and unheard; yet we cannot avoid but express our opinion that while genuine litigants with legitimate grievances relating to civil matters involving properties worth hundreds of millions of rupees and criminal cases in which persons sentenced to death facing gallows under untold agony and persons sentenced to life imprisonment and kept in incarceration for long years, persons suffering from undue delay in service matters— government or private, persons awaiting the disposal of cases wherein huge amounts of public revenue or unauthorised collection of tax amounts are locked up, detenu expecting their release from the detention orders, etc. etc. are all standing in a long serpentine queue for years with the fond hope of getting into the courts and having their grievances redressed, the busybodies, meddlesome interlopers, wayfarers or officious interveners having absolutely no public interest except for personal gain or private profit either of themselves or as a proxy of others or for any other extraneous motivation or for glare of publicity, break the queue muffing their faces by wearing the mask of public interest litigation and get into the courts by filing vexatious and frivolous petitions and thus criminally waste the valuable time of the courts and as a result of which the queue standing outside the doors of the courts never moves, which piquant situation creates frustration in the minds of the genuine litigants and resultantly they lose faith in the administration of our judicial system," the Court concluded.

Case title - Aditya Mohan Arora v. U.O.I.Thru. Secy. Drinking Water & Sanitation & Ors.

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