IMPORTANT POINTS
When a DTP Scheme is in force, and certain land is designated for acquisition for common purposes, the remedy available to the land owner is to approach the Municipality or the Government, as the case may be, for dereserving the land in accordance with the statutory provisions- Unless there is compliance with the statutory provisions by which the Municipality may either take a decision to exclude the land from acquisition or to acquire the land within a specified time limit as provided under the statute, it may not be possible for the land owner to seek a building permit ignoring the sanctioned scheme nor will it be possible for the Municipality to grant the permit.

HRISHIKESH ROY, J.

1. The Thalassery Municipality and their functionaries have preferred these Writ Appeals. They are represented by their learned Standing Counsel, Sri.I.V.Pramod. The respondents-writ petitioners are represented respectively by S/Sri.K. Abdul Jawad, R.Surendran, T.M.Abdul Latheef, M.Sasindran, Deepak Raj, and Rajesh V. Nair, the learned counsel. The learned Senior Government Pleaders S/Sri.Tek Chand and Surin George Ipe represent the State authorities.

2. The issues are common in these Appeals and the matters are heard analogously. Therefore the following judgment will dispose of all the Appeals. For the sake of convenience, the primary facts are extracted from the W.A.No.1154/2019.

3. The writ petitioner, as the owner of land within the limits of Thalassery Municipality, applied for building permit to construct shops and office building. The authority in the Local Self Government Department of the Thalassery Municipality, rejected the application, on the ground that the building site is proposed for construction of a road in the Town Development Plan for the Thalassery Town. Aggrieved by the said decision, the land owner approached this Court. Similar decision(s) were taken to reject the other applications for building permit on the ground that the building site was in an area that is earmarked in the District Town Planning (DTP) for specific projects like Road widening, to be undertaken at a future date. The aggrieved land owners then filed individual Writ Petitions.

4. The contention of the writ petitioners was essentially that, although the proposals for future development were contained in the DTP Scheme prepared under the erstwhile Town and Country Planning Acts, and the said schemes continued to be in force by virtue of the saving provision in Section-113 of the Town and Country Planning Act, 2016, for short the Act, 2016, the Local Authorities were obliged to acquire the lands in question within the period envisaged in Section 67. If they did not, they would be obliged to seek a variation of the DTP Scheme so as to exclude the proposal for future development and consider the applications for building permit, without taking note of the development proposal.

5. On the other hand, the stand of the Municipal authorities was that when the property of the writ petitioner is proposed in the development plan for the Thalassery Town, the development and construction on those lands would directly impact the future development plan for the Town. The Municipality pleaded that the development plan was prepared through due process and there is no challenge to the prepared plan for the Thalassery Township and therefore, intervention with the plan to be executed in future, at the instance of an individual property owner would not be justified in public interest.

6. The impugned judgments indicate that the learned Judge had adverted to the rival contentions and also examined the relevant provisions of the Act, 2016. The Court next found that the Municipality is yet to launch any scheme, notwithstanding the fact that by virtue of sub-section(2) of Section 113 of the Act, 2016, the existing draft Plan or Town Planning Schemes are to be treated as a Scheme or Plan, under the Act, 2016. It was then held that the Scheme of 1983 is deemed to be existing, but the Municipality has failed to take any action to acquire the land as mandated by the Act, 2016. On this finding, the Writ Petitions were decided in favour of the building permit applicants. However, balancing the interest of the individual and the Municipality, the Court under the impugned judgments directed the Municipality to, either acquire the land within three months or consider the building permit-applications, dehors the findings recorded in the rejection-decision.

7. Such judgments in the Writ Petitions are challenged in these Appeals. The learned counsel, Sri.I.V.Pramod for the Thalassery Municipality, refers to Section 67 of the Act, 2016, to point out tha