Improvement Trust faces contempt for non-compliance of High Court orders

Kuldip Bhatia

Ludhiana, March 20

The Ludhiana Improvement Trust (LIT) authorities have landed themselves in a soup for non-compliance of the orders of the Punjab and Haryana High Court regarding deciding representations of respective Residents Welfare Societies of Block C and H/I for restoration of allotments of two community centres in a time-bound manner. The HC has issued contempt notices to the LIT Chairman in both cases which would come up for next hearing on August 9 and July 4 respectively.

In a representation to the Punjab Minister for Local Bodies and the Additional Chief Secretary, Local Government, a city-based RTI activist, Baljit Singh, has said the allotment of land for the community centres in Block C and H/I of Bhai Randhir Singh Nagar Colony, developed by the LIT, was cancelled by the state government in 2014 for non-payment of arrears towards cost of land and various other irregularities.

“Thereafter, both the appeal and review petition filed by the respective welfare societies with the Additional Chief Secretary were rejected on October 2016 and March 2017 respectively as the appellate authority did not find any grounds to interfere with the decision of cancellation of allotment of land by the LIT,” said Baljit Singh, who has been following up this matter for the past several years and was instrumental in cancellation of the allotment as the community centres were not fulfilling the desired purpose.

Even though the premises of the community centres were sealed by the LIT officials after cancellation of allotment and rejection of appeal, the welfare societies filed writ petitions with the HC challenging the orders of cancellation of allotment.

Disposing of the petitions, the HC made almost similar orders directing the competent authority (LIT Chairman/Additional Chief Secretary, Local Government) to decide the representations of the allottee societies within a period of three months (in case of community centre in Blocks H and I; and within a period of one week in case of the Welfare Society of Block C.

Complainant Baljit Singh has alleged in his representation that even though the orders issued by the HC in the two civil writ petitions were one-sided as none of the parties concerned – the LIT and the Local Government Department, were heard, the Trust authorities failed to challenge the orders which points towards collusion of certain officials with the petitioner societies.

“The incompetence and possible collusion of the LIT authorities is also evident from the fact that they failed to take a time-bound decision on the representation of the welfare societies thereby earning wrath of the HC by way of contempt of court proceedings,” the representation added.