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This is an archive article published on February 15, 2005

Last day, CJ cancels land for school with judge links

On his last day as Chief Justice of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, Justice B K Roy today set aside as ‘‘illegal’’ an...

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On his last day as Chief Justice of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, Justice B K Roy today set aside as ‘‘illegal’’ and ‘‘constitutional’’ allotment of land by the Chandigarh administration to a law institute which has two sons of a sitting high court judge as directors.

Justice Roy, who has been transferred, had last year taken on his colleagues over membership of a club near Chandigarh, leading to the unprecedented step of 25 of the 28 judges of the high court going on protest leave.

The Chandigarh Law Institute Private Ltd has on its board of directors two sons of a sitting HC judge, a standing counsel of the Chandigarh administration and a former chairman of Punjab University’s Law Department.

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Separately delivering the 95-page judgement here today, the division bench of Chief Justice Roy and Justice Surya Kant came down heavily on the Union Territory (UT) administration for favouring the company’s ‘‘influential’’ directors and said the controversial allotment was done ‘‘apparently arbitrarily, clandestinely, illegally and unconstitutionally’’.

While Ripjit S Narang and Amarjit S Narang are both sons of HC judge Justice J S Narang, Shailendra Jain is a standing counsel of the Chandigarh administration. Prof V K Bansal was the chairman of Punjab University’s Department of Law at the time of the allotment.

Chief Justice Roy said the Chandigarh administration had sold off the land in Sector 38 at a throwaway price, causing a loss of about Rs 139 crore to the state exchequer. ‘‘Apparently everything was done in a clandestine manner. The unprecedented settlement of land in question in favour of Chandigarh Law Institute was surprisingly done within a few days,’’ he noted.

Justice Roy also suggested that the UT administrator identify the persons responsible for this act and take disciplinary action against them.

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Justice Surya Kant was equally scathing about the Chandigarh administration in his 69-page judgement. The UT, he said, had allotted the institutional site without following any objective criteria, and in complete violation of the principles laid down by the Supreme Court.

Justice Kant directed the Chandigarh administration to take ‘‘necessary/corrective steps’’ within two months from today besides taking a policy decision in a transparent manner keeping in view the observations and findings of the judgment.

He stayed any further construction by the company, and prohibited the UT administration from giving it any advantage in case of any auction or bid conducted later.

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