IMPORTANT POINTS:
In an area that has been developed in accordance with the Scheme that was validly prepared and duly notified in accordance with the provisions of the Town Planning Act, future constructions would have to adhere to the terms of the Scheme and the plans approved there under. This must be so unless and until the Scheme itself is altered or varied by the State Government in accordance with the provisions of the Town and Country Planning Act. The mandate and purport of the Scheme so framed assumes the nature of a law that regulates future construction in the area and would also bind subsequent purchasers of land and users thereof. It may not also be out of place to mention, in this context, that the earmarking of the areas into residential/industrial/commercial/agricultural or keeping apart areas for parks, roads, etc. is an exercise that is done in public interest and hence, the private interest of the land owners who seek to put up particular construction would have to necessarily yield to the overriding public interest that informs the provisions of the DTP Scheme.

A.K. Jayasankaran Nambiar, J.

These Appeals have been preferred by the State of Kerala, as also the Chief Town Planner, aggrieved by the judgments of the learned single Judge in the W.P. (C) Nos.30567 of 2014, 11097 of 2016, 614 of 2017, 9482 of 2016, 9109 of 2016 and 1483 of 2017 respectively. The common contention raised in these Appeals is with regard to the propriety of the directions issued by the learned single Judges concerned, to consider the application for building permits submitted by the writ petitioners in accordance with the provisions of the Kerala Municipality Building Rules, 1999, by ignoring the objection that was raised by the respective Municipalities with regard to the proposed construction offending the Zoning Regulations that existed under the various District Town Planning (DTP) Schemes that were in force.

2. The common thread that runs through the averments in all these Writ Petitions is that the writ petitioners had preferred applications for building permit before the respective local authorities, and the same came to be rejected by the local authorities concerned inter alia on the ground that the proposed construction was on land where the said construction could not be put up on account of the Zoning Regulations that were in place under the DTP Schemes concerned. The contention advanced was essentially that the DTP Schemes concerned were all outdated and hence, the local authority was not justified in relying on the Zoning provisions under the outdated DTP Schemes notwithstanding the fact that the said Schemes that were prepared in terms of the erstwhile Town Planning Acts, had been saved by virtue of Section 113 of the Kerala Town and Country Planning Act, 2016.

3. In the judgments that are impugned in these Appeals, the learned single judges took note of the decisions of this court in Padmini V. State of Kerala (1999 (3) KLT 465) wherein it was held by a Division Bench of this court that no building permit can be refused merely because there was a proposal by the local authority concerned to acquire the land in future, as also the decision of the Supreme Court in Raju S. Jethmalani v. State of Maharashtra (2005 (11) SCC 222) wherein it was held that refusing to grant building permits by placing reliance on obsolete DTP Schemes would tantamount to a clear violation of the provisions of the Constitution. Applying the said rationale, the learned single Judges proceeded to observe that inasmuch as the local authority concerned had not implemented the proposal in the erstwhile DTP Schemes with regard to zoning, the mere existence of the outdated DTP Schemes could not come in the way of the right of the writ petitioners to effect constructions on their respective parcels of land.

4. Before us, it is the contention of the learned Government Pleader Sri. V. Tekchand and Sri.Surin George Ipe appearing on behalf of the appellants that a distinction has to be made between those provisions in an existing DTP Scheme which relate to zoning of areas for particular uses such as commercial/residential/industrial/agricultural, and those provisions which contemplate acquisition of land belonging to private persons for the purposes of public projects such as parks, roads, etc. envisaged for a future period. It is their specific contention that for the former category of cases, so long as the Zoning Regulations are in force and contained in DTP Schemes that have been validly prepared and published in terms of the Town and Country Planning Act that was in force, the said Zoning Regulations would have to be seen as a law regulating future constructions after the publication of the Scheme. Reliance is placed on the decision of this court in Philip George v. State of Kerala (2014 (2) KLT 116) which decision has attained finality through the dismissal of W.A.No.759 of 2014 by a Division Bench of this court on 9.4.2015. It is their case that the decisions relied upon in the impugned judgment can, at best, have releva