Govt wants to club pleas on illegal allotment of flats

Maharashtra government today informed Bombay High Court that it had moved the bench headed by Chief Justice to club two civil petitions with a similar criminal PIL challenging illegal multiple or double allotment of flats from Chief Minister's discretionary quota.
The petitioner, Ketan Tirodkar, opposed the clubbing of his criminal PIL with the two civil petitions pending before the High Court.
However, Justices P V Hardas and P N Deshmukh, who are hearing criminal PIL of Tirodkar, said their bench would wait for the decision of another bench in regard to clubbing of two civil petitions. Accordingly, they posted the matter for hearing on October 23.

Earlier, the court had directed the state to furnish a list of those who have been allotted houses from Chief Minister's discretionary quota for more than once or to other members of their family.
The government has not yet furnished the list but informed today that it had moved another bench for clubbing civil and criminal matters on the same issue.
The petitioner alleged that there were several cases where a second allotment was made to the same allottee or to the allottees' spouses or their family members.

The PIL alleged that politicians and journalists were main beneficiaries of such allotments and that "resourceful" people were allotted flats at concessional rates from the Chief Minister's discretionary quota while the needy and common people are ignored.

Tirodkar gave examples of journalist couples who had been allotted adjacent flats and also cited names of some politicians and their kin who were allotted flats from the CM's quota.
The petitioner had annexed to the public interest litigation (PIL) a reply received under the Right To Information (RTI) Act, which he received from the Maharashtra state government which included names of allottees from 1989 to 2010.
However, it did not contain names of double or multiple allottees.