Uttarakhand High Court today gave the state government 12 days' time to explain what it had done to have vacated the official bungalows occupied by former Chief Ministers in the city.
Hearing a petition filed by noted rights activist Avdhash Kaushal in 2010, a Division Bench of the High Court comprising Chief Justice K M Joseph and Justice V K Bisht said the state government should explain by October 19 the steps taken by it to have vacated the bungalows occupied by former Chief Ministers.
The High Court's direction came when the former Chief Ministers told the court through their lawyers that they could vacate the bungalows only after being asked to do so by the state government which had allotted them, the petitioner's lawyer Kartikeyan Gupta told PTI.
Arguing that the ex-CMs were being evasive, Gupta expressed surprise over the latest stand taken by them saying when the matter was being heard last on September 30 they had told the court that they were willing to vacatethe bulngalows allotted to them.
Former CM N D Tiwari's lawyer, who appeared before the court for the first time, sought six months to vacate the bungalow on grounds of the octogenarian leader's "illness".
Armed with a recent Supreme Court order directing former Chief Ministers of Uttar Pradesh to vacate government bungalows occupied by them for years in Lucknow after demitting office, Kaushal, a Padmashree awardee, had sought early hearing and disposal of his six-year-old petition on a similar matter.
Kaushal's petition seeks a direction from the court to five former CMs of Uttarakhand to vacate sprawling government bungalows occupied by them in Dehradun despite owning houses of their own in the city and elsewhere including Lucknow and Delhi years after relinquishing office.
"It is a drain on the state exchequer as the former Chief Ministers have been occupying these accomodations free of cost for years despite demitting their offices years ago besides enjoying other facilities at a time when consitututional offices like the State Human Rights Commission office is currently housed in a rented accomodation in the city for which the commission has to pay a monthly rent of Rs 1.20 lakh," the petition said.
A cumulative sum by way of rent should also be recovered from the ex CMs with retrospective effect, the petitioner said, adding they should also give up other facilities enjoyed by them.
The former CMs in question include N D Tiwari, Bhuvan Chandra Khanduri, Bhagat Singh Koshiyari, Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank and Vijay Bahuguna.
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