D L F HOUSING AND CONSTRUCTION PRIVATE LIMITED Vs. DELHI MUNICIPAL CORPORATION

JUDGEMENT

(1.) By this petition Messrs D.L.F. Housing and Construction Company (Private), Limited, a company carrying on the business of colonisation and development of lands in Delhi, have prayed that a writ of mandamus or any other appropriate writ or direction be issued restraining the respondents from interfering with the company's "peaceful possession and ownership rights" in respect of the plots of land earmarked in their sanctioned lay-out plans of the six colonies mentioned in the petition for purposes of schools, hospitals, etc. and directing them to treat these plots as reserved for the purposes for which they were sanctioned, and not to reject the building plans submitted to them in spect of these plots, on the ground that the said plots were not the property of the company and had vested in the Delhi Municipal Corporation.

(2.) They have also prayed that the respondents be directed to grant sanction of the building plans in conformity with the sanctioned use of the particular plots in terms of the petition. Respondent No. 1 to the petition is the Delhi Municipal Corporation and respondent Nos. 2 and 3 are the Deputy Commissioner of the Corporation and the Delhi Development Authority. On an application made on behalf of the South Extension (II) Plot- holders and Residents Welfare Association (Registered), New Delhi, by order dated December 3, 1965, the association in terms of this order was also allowed to file its return to the petition as respondent No. 4. The petition was admitted to hearing by a Division Bench and that is why it has now come up before this Bench.

(3.) The case of the petitioners, in brief, is that they carried on the business of colonisation and development of lands and actually developed vast areas and laid out several colonies in Delhi and New Delhi including the six colonies mentioned in the petition. For this purpose they divided the sites of each colony into plots for the erection of buildings and also allotted and reserved lands therein for roads, open spaces, gardens, recreation grounds, schools, markets and other public purposes, and submitted the lay-out plans to Delhi Development (Provisional) Authority and obtained its permission under the Delhi (Control of Building Operations) Act, 1955 (Act 53 of 1955) to develop them. After the colonies were developed they took steps to utilise the vacant sites for the purpose for which they had been earmarked in the sanctioned plans, but respondent No. 1, Municipal Corporation of Delhi, intervened and claimed to take over the plots reserved for schools, hospitals, and public buildings, etc. free of cost under the provision of the Delhi (Control of Building Operations) Regulations, 1955. By letter dated 24 June, 1965 (Annexure A) the Corporation maintained that these vacant plots automatically vested in it and by another letter dated 12th January, 1955 (Annexure C) it called upon the petitioners to hand them over to the Corporation free of cost. The petitioners contend that the Corporation has no such right and its demands are wholly illegal and that they are, therefore, entitled to the reliefs prayed for in the petition and set out above.