Petitioner fined Rs 50,000 for bid to discredit another

CHENNAI: The Madras high court has slammed a litigant, who had alleged ‘malpractices’ in the filing of a PIL with regard to allotment of shops in Koyambedu wholesale market and other places under minister’s quota, and also slapped Rs 50,000 cost on him.
M Baskar, a vegetable vendor, purchased a shop measuring 194sqft in Koyambedu Wholesale Market Complex from one P Shanthi in December 2010.He said shops are allotted to friends and relatives of politicians and bureaucrats under ‘minister’s quota’ and then sold the genuine users for a high cost.
A single judge recently dismissed a petition challenging allocation of shops under the minister’s quota. Counsel in that case, instead of filing a writ appeal before a division bench, had filed a PIL. Baskar’s counsel alleged malpractice in the PIL, and claimed that the woman advocate in the case too had a role in the malpractice.
Angry with the contention and inclusion of the advocate by Baskar in his petition, first bench comprising Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice T S Sivagnanam said: “We find this petition is really abuse of the process of court. The predicament the petitioner finds himself is due to his own action. It is like a person buying a stolen property knowingly, and then claiming that he does not know he should bear the consequences of that property being taken away. The petitioner would naturally have felt knowledge that there cannot be any transfer of shop, whatever may be the methodology of having obtained the shop. The consequence thus is that when the allotment itself is cancelled, the petitioner is a consequential sufferer."
They further said; “We are also pained to note the endeavor of the petitioner to rope in counsel who fought against minister’s quota."
It was Baskar’s case that he deposited 20% of the cost of the shop and participated in the draw of lots as per the CMDA’s announcement published on May 27, for a shop in the complex. The announcement, however, was scrapped by the then urban development minister of Tamil Nadu, Parithi Elamvazhuthi, who also announced a 15% minister’s quota.