Hon’ble Sudhanshu Dhulia, J. (Oral)

1. The town of Roorkee (presently in District Haridwar) was earlier a Nagar Palika Parishad, but since March 2013, after the dissolution, its status has now changed to Nagar Nigam/Municipal Corporation. The Municipal Corporation is functioning in the town after the election of the new Nagar Nigam. While the Corporation was under the control of Administrator, order was passed to take possession of the Nagar Palika Parishad properties, which had been under the occupation of unauthorized occupant. It appears that in pursuance of this order, the petitioners, who were occupying the properties of Nagar Nigam, are now to be vacated. Hence, all of them filed writ petitions before this Court.

2. In some of the writ petitions, interim orders were passed in favour of the petitioners. All the petitioners before this Court were either employees of the erstwhile Nagar Palika Parishad (which was subsequently converted into a ‘Nagar Nigam’) or family members of the employees of the Nagar Palika Parishad or the Nagar Nigam. In the capacity of an employee of the Parishad, the petitioners or their predecessors were allotted the official accommodations by the Nagar Palika Parishad, which admittedly could only have been in possession of the employees, till he was an employee of the Nagar Palika Parishad or Corporation, as the case might be. In all these cases, however, either such allottees have continued to be in occupation of these properties even after their retirement from service or in some cases, prior to their retirement, the same property, which was allotted to them on rent, has been subsequently allotted to their relatives who are not employees of the Parishad and on the strength of such orders, these petitioners continue to occupy these official premises.

3. The case of the petitioners before this Court is that they are not in occupation of the properties, as the employees of Nagar Palika Parishad or Nagar Nigam. They are also not unauthorized occupant, as the properties have been allotted in their favour by the erstwhile Chairman of Nagar Parishad though in different years, and even if it is presumed for the sake of arguments that they are unauthorized occupants, they can only be evicted from the premises under a due process of law, which could be done only under the U.P. Public Premises Act. They have, hence, challenged the procedure for their eviction at the hands of the Nagar Nigam. In these cases, the Nagar Nigam, has filed its counter affidavits in each of the cases.

4. For the sake of convenience, however, the facts of WPMS No. 1133 of 2013 are being taken into consideration for the disposal of these matters.

5. The facts of the case are that the father of the petitioner – Ilam Chand was an employee of Nagar Palika Parishad, Roorkee, and he was allotted the official accommodation, at the time of his employment. In the year 1993, by an order of the then Executive Officer of Nagar Palika Parishad, the same accommodation was allotted to the petitioner’s son – Dinesh Chand (present petitioner before this Court). He has also annexed the letter dated 19.08.1993, which has been passed by the Executive Officer of Nagar Palika Parishad, Roorkee which states that it is being allotted in favour of the petitioner (Dinesh Chand) at monthly rent of ‘25/- by orders of the Chairman of Nagar Palika Parishad. However, no provision of law has been shown to this Court by which the Chairman of this Parishad can suo moto allot a property of Nagar Palika Parishad to a private individual, without there being any resolution of the Nagar Palika Parishad on that. Since no resolution of Nagar Palika Parishad has been shown, hence, the order passed by the Chairman had no sanctity of law, as the counsel for the Parishad Mr. Parikshit Saini would argue.

6. Before going into the merit of the case, however, Ms. Shivangi Gangwar, who is the learned counsel for another petitioner i.e. Smt. Sudesh Sharma (in WP