SANT RAM SODHI Vs. LT GOVERNOR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) By these proceedings, under Article 226 of the Constitution, directions have been sought to quash demands raised by the respondent Delhi Development Authority (hereafter 'DDA') on 20th October 2003 and also for a direction to the DDA to convert lease hold rights of the petitioner's property into free hold interest.

(2.) The petitioner purchased a 378 Sq.Mtrs plot, being 621, Block-B-1, Pankha Road Residential Scheme (hereafter called ?othe property ? ) in an open auction, for valuable consideration, in 1973. The DDA executed a perpetual lease deed in the petitioner's favour. He raised a single storeyed construction on the plot. At that time, the petitioner was a public servant, being a Class-I officer in the Indian Foreign Service. He, therefore, let out the premises to a tenant. The tenant put up certain unauthorized additions/ constructions on the property, and built shops with the aim of letting them out, unauthorizedly. The petitioner filed a suit for injunction. The Civil Court, in those proceedings (Suit No.376/86) issued an order of status quo.

(3.) The petitioner had, in the meanwhile, filed eviction proceedings being E-142/84 against the tenant. That was decreed in his favour on 29.09.1992. The tenants' revision petition, directed against the eviction decree was dismissed on 27.09.1993. The tenant, apparently set up a stranger, who filed a suit before this Court and secured an ex-parte stay of dispossession from the property caliming to be a purchaser, in occupation of the premises. The ex-parte order was finally vacated on 14.07.1995; the appeal against that order was dismissed by the Division Bench on 31.07.1995.