The Allahabad High Court has directed the Chief Secretary of Uttar Pradesh to take action against the Director (Administration), Medical and Health Department and inform the High Court through the Registrar General.
The Division Bench of Justice Ashwani Kumar Mishra and Justice Vikram D. Chauhan passed this order while hearing a petition filed by Ramjatan And Others.
The 83 petitioners have contented that they are duly recorded tenure holders of the land in question and without any acquisition or consent on their part, the authorities are compelling them to surrender their land to the state.
According to petitioners, the acquisition of land is for the Solid Waste Management Plant and one of the prayers in the petition also is to direct the state authority to shift the plant to some other location.
Pursuant to the order dated September 14, 2021, the District Magistrate, Gorakhpur has filed his personal affidavit in which it is stated that most petitioners have voluntarily transferred their land by executing sale deed and sale consideration has also been received by them, mostly in their bank accounts.
It is stated that petitioners have suppressed correct facts and the petition has been filed entirely based upon suppression and concealment of material facts.
A reply has been received to the compliance affidavit in which the factum of execution of sale deed by most of the petitioners is admitted and what is sought to be urged now by the petitioners is that the execution of sale was not out of their own volition and that they were compelled to execute the sale deed.
The Court said it is at a loss to understand that in case petitioners were compelled to execute the sale deed, what prevented them from placing such fact at the very outset in the petition. The counsel for the petitioners stated that the fact about execution of sale was not brought to his notice.
The Court is of the view that extraordinary remedy under Article 226 of the Constitution of India is not meant to protect the interest of those, who approached the Court on the strength of suppression and concealment of material facts. The facts suppressed initially and was not originally pleaded in the petition, have been disclosed by the respondents, whereafter a new case is sought to be developed on behalf of the petitioners and would place the petitioners in the category of those, who have not approached the Court with clean hands.
Such persons, therefore, are not entitled to any relief in exercise of equity jurisdiction. Even otherwise, the contention that the sale deed was executed on account of coercion, is a question of fact, which has to be pleaded and proved. Pleadings in writ petition are wholly deficient on that count.
In such circumstances, the court deemed it appropriate to dismiss the petition with costs quantified at Rs 10,000.
“The amount shall be recovered from petitioners, as arrears of land revenue, unless the same is deposited by them within four weeks. The amount, so deposited, shall be transferred to Legal Services Authority at Gorakhpur and would be utilized for the welfare of needy by the authority concerned,” the court ordered.