New Delhi: The Supreme Court has struck down allotment of three adjacent plots in Navi Mumbai to a realtor in 2004 by then Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde, saying the chief minister cannot dispose of public property at his own “sweet will.”
The Bench also struck down the Bombay High Court’s judgment restoring ownership to the businessman even after the Maharashtra Government’s City and Industrial Development Corporation had scrapped the deal after inquiry. Holding that land allotment without bids was improper, the Supreme Court said any action of a state “must be founded on a sound, transparent and well-defined policy” and not “smack of arbitrariness.”
