HC sets March next year as deadline for UT Admn to take call

Saurabh Malik

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, October 20

Just about three months after the Chandigarh Administration claimed the setting up of a panel for recommending lease money chargeable from various clubs in the city, the Punjab and Haryana High Court has set March next year as the deadline for it to take a decision.

“The Chandigarh Administration is directed to take a decision before the next date of hearing,” a Division Bench asserted, while adjourning the hearing on a petition filed by the Central Club to last week of March next year. 

Appearing before the Bench on a previous date of hearing, UT senior standing counsel Suvir Sehgal had stated that the Administration had constituted the committee on July 10 “to make recommendations with regard to lease money etc. chargeable from various clubs, including the Central Club”. Taking a note of the submission, the Bench had adjourned the hearing “to await the recommendations of the committee”. 

The city’s elite Central Club had initially moved the High Court against the proposed move to ouster it from the Sector 9 community centre way back in February 2015. Taking up the matter, a Division Bench of the High Court put the Chandigarh Administration and the Municipal Corporation on notice.

The controversy stemmed from the transfer of the community centre from the Administration to the Municipal Corporation and the subsequent action of asking the club to vacate the building. The Central Club has been paying it dues.

The High Court has been hearing petitions on lease row filed by various clubs for more than five years now. At one point of time, a former Apex Court Judge, Justice Kuldip Singh, was appointed as a mediator by the High Court to resolve the renewal of lease row between the Golf Club and the Chandigarh Administration.

The High Court had earlier made it clear that it wanted the Administration and the Golf Club to put their heads together to resolve the row. 

Seeking directions for setting aside the order/letter issued by the Administration, the club had contended that the same was totally illegal, arbitrary and discriminatory. The Administration, vide the letter, had asked the club to deposit lease money from March 16, 2008, to March 15, 2013. The amount, as per the calculations, came out to be Rs 9,27,48,000.

Directions were also sought by the club to extend the lease of the petitioner society either in terms of draft lease proposed by letter dated December 2, 2009, or on terms similar to that of the Delhi Golf Club, both in terms of lease money as well as tenure.