CITIZENS OF BUNDI Vs. MUNICIPAL BOARD

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Peoples development through ensuring "environmental purity" public parks, chowks, chogans, play grounds wide streets, roads, squares, and public open spaces for community gardens, physical exercises, games, festivals, meetings, functions are to be safeguarded for perpetual public se and making them inalienable. Safeguards for them contained in constitutional mandates of Arts.47, 48 and 51 and Municipal, U.I.T. Panchayat and easementary laws, whether to be undermined and scrapped for commercial benefits of colonisers, housing societies and even Municipalities or state authorities, is the pivot of legal debate in this "public interest litigation".

(2.) These are three connected appeals Nos. 156/80, 171/80 and 206/80 in which the enlightened citizens of Bundi in widen public interest for protecting a public park area of the city of Bundi, have filed these suits. The Municipal Board started auctioning the plots out of the public park for construction of shops as a commercial proposition. The citizens felt that they are being deprived of the valuable amenities of public park where people gather for public meetings, social religious and political and entertainment, etc., since last several years.

(3.) The civil litigation resulted in a contest between the enlightened citizens, who claimed that the civil body should not auction this important, valuable and useful land of the public for commercialisation and pecuniary benefits. The Municipal Board on the contrary contested both factually and legally this proposition.