Land Use Conversion – Land owners and plot holders contended that the ownership of the ‘open space’ and the ‘amenity space’ vest in the landowners/plot holders and as such, order of the High Court needs no interference:
Held: The High Court was right in holding that insofar as ‘open space’ is concerned, it was required to be kept as ‘open space’ for use by the plot holders – However, insofar as the ‘amenity space’ is concerned, the High Court mixed it with the ‘open space’– It was to be handed over to the Municipal Council as one of the pre-conditions for converting the land from a ‘No Development Zone’ to a ‘Residential Zone’ – Not only that, but acting on the said Notification, the landowners entered into more than one agreement with the Municipal Council, thereby agreeing to hand over the ‘open space’ as well as the ‘amenity space’ to the Municipal Council – In the instant case, insofar as the compulsory reserved land is concerned, it pertains to ‘open space’ and there is no need to interfere with the finding of the High Court in that regard – However, as far as the ‘amenity space’ is concerned, it was on the basis of the conditions imposed by the State of Maharashtra while converting the land, which was reserved for a ‘nonresidential’ purpose, to a ‘residential’ purpose – The landowners not only accepted the said condition but also acting on the basis of the same entered into more than one agreement with the Municipal Council transferring the ‘amenity space’ in favour of the Municipal Council – If a Government gives the benefit of development of land concerned with permission to sub-divide the same and uses it for commercial purpose and it, in turn, requires the landowner to handover part of land free of cost for public utility purpose, such a clause cannot be held to be illegal – As such, the High Court has grossly erred in allowing the writ petitions – Judgment and order dated 04.07.2019 passed by the High Court set aside. [Paras 20, 21, 22 and 23] LIST OF CITATIONS AND OTHER REFERENCES
Pt. Chet Ram Vashist (Dead) by LRs. V. Municipal Corporation of Delhi (1995) 1 SCC 47: [1994] 5 Suppl. SCR 180; A.P. State Financial Corporation v. GAR Re-rolling Mills and another (1994) 2 SCC 647: [1994]
1 SCR 857; R.N. Gosain v. Yashpal Dhir (1992) 4 SCC 683: [1992] 2 Suppl. SCR 257; National Insurance Co. Ltd. v. Mastan and another (2006) 2 SCC 641: [2005] 5 Suppl. SCR 704; State of Punjab and others v. Dhanjit Singh Sandhu (2014) 15 SCC 144: [2014] 3 SCR 1121; Union of India and others v. N. Murugesan and others (2022) 2 SCC 25; Narayanrao Jagobaji Gowande Public Trust v. State of Maharashtra and others (2016) 4 SCC
443 – referred to.
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As published in the Supreme Court Reports, Supreme Court of India. Text from the Indian Supreme Court Judgments open data set (Dattam Labs), CC BY 4.0.
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