ATC TELECOM TOWER CORPORATION PVT LTD Vs. KADUKUTTY GRAMA PRANCHAYATH COMMITTEE REPRESENTED BY ITS PRESIDENT

JUDGEMENT

(1.) As the issue involved in both these writ petitions is the same, they are taken up for consideration together and disposed by this common judgment.

(2.) The petitioner in W.P.(C) .No.2942/2017 is a private limited company engaged in the business of providing telecommunication infrastructure to various telecommunication service providers in the State of Kerala. In the writ petition, the petitioner is aggrieved by Ext.P10 order passed by the respondent Panchayat, which cancels a permit issued to the petitioner for the purposes of constructing a telecommunication tower within the territorial limits of the said Panchayat. The facts in the writ petition would indicate that, after the petitioner had commenced construction of the telecommunication tower, based on the permit granted to it by the respondent Panchayat, the Panchayat was faced with objections from various persons in the locality, and on the basis of the said objections, the respondent Panchayat has issued stop memos to the petitioner. The petitioner is seen to have impugned the said stop memos through appeals preferred before the Tribunal for Local Self Government Institutions, and had obtained a stay of the operation of the stop memos from the said Tribunal, pending disposal of the appeals. It was while so that Ext.P10 order was issued by the Panchayat cancelling the permit itself citing objections received from persons in the locality as a ground for cancelling the permit.

(3.) When the writ petition [W.P.(C) .No.2942/2017] came up for admission, this Court, while admitting the writ petition, also granted an interim stay of operation of Ext.P10 order, initially for a period of one week, and the said interim order was extended subsequently from time to time, and continues to be in force even today. The petitioner in W.P.(C) .No.12159/2017 is an adjoining property owner of the premises where the petitioner in W.P.(C) .No.2942/2017 is putting up the telecommunication tower. The petitioner is stated to be a cancer patient, and in his writ petition, the prayer is essentially for preventing the petitioner in W.P.(C) .No.2942/2017 from going ahead with the construction activities of the telecommunication tower during the pendency of the appeals before the Tribunal for Local Self Government Institutions.