Allotment Of Public Properties On The Basis Of Discretionary Quota Has To Be Done Away With
Case: State of Odisha vs Pratima Mohanty
Coram: Justices MR Shah and BV Nagarathna
Case No.: CrA 1455-1456 OF 2021
Court Observation: “Before parting we may observe that now the day has come to do away with allotment of government largess on the basis of discretionary quota as this inevitably leads to corruption, nepotism and favouritism. Government and/or the public authorities like B.D.A. are the custodian of public properties. Allotment of public properties must be transparent and has to be fair and non-arbitrary. In such matters public interest only has to be the prime guiding consideration. The aforesaid principle is in order to get the best or maximum price so that it may serve the public purpose and public interest so as to avoid loss to the authority and/or the public exchequer.”
“When a democratic government in exercise of its discretion selects the recipients for its largess, then discretion should be exercised objectively, rationally, intelligibly, fairly and in a non-arbitrary manner and it should not be subjective and according to the private opinion and/or the whims and fancies of the persons in power and/or the public servants. Even if guidelines are issued to be followed while allotment of the plots under the discretionary quota and it is found that many a time they are hardly followed or are manipulated to suit the particular circumstances. Therefore, the best thing is to do away with such discretionary quota and allotments of the public properties/plots must be through public auction by and large. Even in the case where the policy decision is taken to allot the plots to a particular class – downtrodden class etc. in that case also the guidelines must be strictly followed and as observed hereinabove the allotment must reflect the fair play and non-arbitrariness and should have objective, criteria/procedure.”
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