Tearing hurry to lease land not malafide: HC

The court allowed Ullahawas villagers to withdraw the petition with the liberty to file afresh.

Earlier,a division bench of Justices Jasbir Singh and Augustine George Masih asked Ullahawas villagers why they had not challenged the entire lease policy of Haryana.

Hearing their petition,accusing the government of being in a “tearing hurry” in leasing out land to the Rajiv Gandhi trust,the bench said it was not convinced that this was a public interest litigation. “Why has the lease not been challenged? How is it a public interest litigation?”

The counsel for petitioners claimed that the Haryana government,after award of lease to the trust,amended the rules to favour the trust so that it becomes the owner of the land. The bench told the counsel that if a case is to be made out,then the petitioners will have to challenge the lease policy.

The bench said the petitioners could question why even after 33 years of lease,the lessee would not be paying even half the amount to the panchayat. The villagers withdrew the petition with the liberty to file a better petition.

The petitioners had alleged that the sole motive of the state was to “please the trust,which is an influential body,and in this process the public interest of the villagers has been jeopardised. Even the lease price is not at all commensurate to the value of the land or the price it would have fetched”.