RAJIV TRIVEDI Vs. STATE OF ANDHRA PRADESH

JUDGEMENT

(1.) "Public Servants", as the words imply, are those who hold offices under the State to serve the public at large. The no holds barred squabble in full public gaze by such officers, for retention/demolition of an extra-bedroom in the Government residential quarters allotted to one of them or to continue to retain occupation of the Government Quarters without payment of arrears of rent due from them to the public exchequer, does not augur well for the bureaucracy and is yet another indicator of a rapid fall in the high ethical standards which public servants were hitherto known to maintain.

(2.) While he was working as the Additional Director of the Andhra Pradesh Police Academy, the petitioner was allotted Flat No.2 at Block No.4, Government Officers' Flats, Road No. 10, Banjara Hills, Hyderabad, vide G.O. Ms. No.385 dated 23.8.2005, for his residence. He occupied the flat in January, 2006. While the other flats in the said block have three bedrooms, the ground floor flat allotted to the petitioner has a fourth bedroom constructed by the R&B Department pursuant to G.O. Rt. No.877 dated 7.10.2004. Like other blocks in the premises, Block No.4 is a ground plus three (G+3) floors building and houses seven residential flats-one on the ground floor and two each in the first, second and third floors. While the petitioner wants to have the lift installed at the front of the block and thereby retain the extra bed room, the other officers, arrayed against him in this unseemly battle, seek to have the fourth bed room, in the ground floor flat, demolished and a lift installed thereat i.e., at the rear of the block.

(3.) What is of ever greater concern is that precious time of the Court is sought to be consumed in resolution of the question whether a lift should be installed in front of the block or at its rear i.e., where the fourth bed room of the ground floor flat, allotted to the petitioner, is located. The petitioner, a temporary occupant of a Government flat, has no legal right either to retain the fourth bedroom or to insist that the Government, which owns these buildings, should install a lift only in front of the block and not at its rear. Ordinarily, this Court would have refused to entertain such writ petitions as a writ of mandamus is not a writ of course or a writ of right but is, as a rule, discretionary; there must be a judicially enforceable right for the enforcement of which a mandamus will lie; the legal right to enforce the performance of a duty must be in the applicant himself and, in general, the Court would only enforce the performance of statutory duties by public bodies on application of a person who can show that he has himself a legal right to insist on such performance. (State of Kerala v. A. Lakshmikutty, (1986) 4 SCC 632). However as the petitioner alleges violation of statutory provisions if the lift were to be installed at the rear of the block, and has also raised a question of larger public importance regarding continued occupation of these Government Quarters by public servants without even paying the measly monthly rent prescribed for availing such a convenience, I do not consider it appropriate to throw the writ petition out at the threshold.