HC seeks policy on fraudulent allotment of CM quota flats

The Bombay High Court today asked Maharashtra Government to come out with a clear policy for dealing with the persons who got two or more flats under the Chief Minister's discretionary quota fraudulently.
The division bench headed by Justice Abhay Oka, hearing a PIL challenging such allotments, asked Advocate General Darius Khambata to state the government's policy on June 10.
The HC also asked the state how it could drop the prosecution against such beneficiaries simply because they were ready to surrender the second flat.
In an affidavit filed today, the Government said if any beneficiary had filed false affidavit on property details at the time of allotment, it would ask him/her to surrender the flat, failing which criminal action will be taken under Section 420 (cheating) of the IPC.

However, if such a beneficiary, after the initiation of criminal case, surrenders one of the two flats, or having sold both the flats, pays the sale price of the second flat as per the Ready Reckoner, then the criminal action would be withdrawn, it said.
The court, however asked why a person should escape punishment if he or she had obtained the flat fraudulently even though he or she was willing to surrender the flat.
Petitioner Ketan Tirodkar, a former journalist, has alleged that politicians and journalists were the main beneficiaries of double or multiple allotments. In one case, he said, a journalist couple were allotted adjacent flats in the same building, when as per the rules a flat from CM's quota can not be alloted if the person's spouse has been alloted a flat.