PUDA scheme for own staff stayed by court

Chandigarh, November 3
The Punjab and Haryana High Court today stayed a PUDA scheme under which plots were to be alloted to its employees in the Mohali, Ludhiana, Patiala and Bathinda Urban Estates.

A Division Bench of Acting Chief Justice MM Kumar and Justice Rajiv Narain Raina stayed the operation of the PUDA circular dated September 24, 2010, inviting applications from its regular staff (with five years of service) for allotment of a plot each.

As per the scheme, Class-1 officers were entitled to plots of 14 marlas, Class-II officers to 10 marlas and Class-III to eight marlas. Class-IV staff were entitled to five marla plots. Challenging the move, advocate-cum-petitioner HC Arora contended that instead of acting as a custodian of public interest, PUDA was acting illegally at the cost of tax payers’ money.

The petitioner also brought to the notice of the Bench that PUDA had recently regularised a large number of daily-wage workers with retrospective effect from January 6, 2001, and had declared on June 7 that they too could seek allotment of residential plots.

The petitioner argued that PUDA was misusing the trust reposed in it by the public by unduly enriching its employees through the impugned scheme and also misusing the land acquired by it for public purposes.