MOHAN SINGH Vs. MUNICIPAL CORPORATION, AMRITSAR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This judgment will dispose of two Letters Patent Appeals Nos. 278 and 279 of 1979 which are directed against a common judgment of the learned Single Judge dated October 19, 1979.

(2.) The Municipal Corporation, Amritsar, which was constituted on March 30, 1977, for the development of streets in the two localities Vijay Nagar and Gopal Nagar, decided to levy development charges under section 241 of the Punjab Municipal Corporation Act on the owners of the houses situate in the said localities. Fourteen residents of Vijay Nagar and 29 residents of Gopal Nagar challenged the said levy by filing two separate petitions, C.W.P. Nos. 4004 of 1977 and 38 of 1978 on the ground that the streets which were to be developed were public streets and as such no development charges could be levied on the owners of the houses abutting on these streets. These petitions were contested by the respondents who controverted the claim of the petitioners that the said streets were public streets.

(3.) Initially both the localities formed part of Gram Sabha and were included in the Municipal area on December 22, 1976. The Municipality was later on constituted into a Corporation with effect from March 30, 1977. According to section 3(m) of the Punjab Gram Panchayat Act, a public street means a passage which the public has a right to use. The streets in dispute, therefore, were public streets within the meaning of the said section. This however, does not help the appellants because the public nature of the streets has now been determined according to the provisions of the Corporation Act. As there is no definition of the public street in the Punjab Municipal Corporation, the definitions given in the Punjab Municipal Act has to be resorted to determine whether the streets in dispute are public streets.