Can't Deny House To A Govt. Employee On Ground That He Already Has One Of A Lower Type: P&H HC

The High Court of Punjab and Haryana have ruled that merely because a person is in occupation of a government accommodation which is lower than his legal entitlement would not be a cogent reason to refuse him allotment as per his legal entitlement.

With this observation, Justice Rajiv Narain Raina directed the Administration of UT of Chandigarh to alot the Petitioner, Rajinder Parsad, a Government accommodation according to his entitlement.

Prasad is an OSD to the Speaker of Vidhan Sabha of Punjab who was given an out of turn allotment of "Type X" House from the Punjab pool of Government accommodation available in Chandigarh. This allotment was subsequently cancelled citing two reasons:

i. Paucity of accommodation in Chandigarh; and

ii. Petitioner was already in occupation of Government accommodation "Type XIII".

Considerably, Type XIII accommodation is a smaller house than the petitioner's entitlement to Type X accommodation.

Stating that both these reasons could not have been used "arbitrarily" to deprive the Petitioner of his legal entitlement, Justice Raina held that the Petitioner had the right to allotment of a Government accommodation according to his entitlement.

"Paucity of Government accommodation is not substantiated by data for the Court to take a view. The fact that the petitioner is in occupation of Government accommodation of a type lower than his entitlement would also not be a justifiable reason to refuse allotment of accommodation as per his legal entitlement. Once out of turn allotment is made by the competent authority for any reason whatsoever, there must exist very cogent grounds to revoke the order and which action must stand judicial scrutiny," he said.

With these observations, the court quashed the order cancelling the Petitioner's allotment to Type X accommodation and directed the government to alot the same to him as per the time-line fixed by the administration in this behalf.

The Petitioner was represented by Advocate Vivek Sharma and the State by Advocate Aman Pal.