New Delhi, May 26: The Supreme Court today showered praise on Sourav Ganguly’s “glorious cover drives” and “effortless” sixes but clean bowled his efforts to obtain land to build a school in Calcutta.It quashed the former Left Front government’s two-year-old allotment of 63.04 cottahs in Salt Lake to Sourav, peppering the then administration and Calcutta High Court with words of reproach and referring to the cricketer’s lack of expertise in the field for which land was given.“The allottee may be a well-known sportsman but does not claim any expertise as an educationist,” a two-judge bench said.It rebuked the Left government for adopting “questionable means” to provide the plot and “failing to discharge its constitutional role”, and stressed the importance of fairness in land allotments — a punch that should be particularly painful after the poll rout.
The court singled out Sourav’s biggest backer in the erstwhile Left government, Asok Bhattacharya, saying: “This court has not been able to get any answer from the state why on a request by the allottee to the minister for urban development, the government granted the allotment with remarkable speed and without considering all aspects.”Justices G.S. Singhvi and A.K. Ganguly criticised the high court for upholding the April 1, 2009, allotment despite petitioners citing that Sourav’s trust was dominated by his family and thus flouted ICSE rules.They referred to the high court’s “strange logic” that it was for the ICSE to consider the matter at the time of granting recognition to the school. With its verdict on April 12 last year, the high court had refused to exercise a jurisdiction vested in it, the top court observed.People in Salt Lake, many of them professed Sourav fans, celebrated their idol’s court defeat as they would once toast his on-field feats, saying the judgment was “a message to celebrities who think they can get whatever they want”. (See Metro)
Some 800 residents of CA Block, where the plot is located, had fought the court battle along with the NGO Humanity and a citizen, Arunangshu Chakraborty. Now Sourav must hand the plot back within two weeks to the government, which has to refund whatever the cricketer had paid in another two weeks.“The order of allotment of plot no CA-222, Sector-V, Salt Lake (Bidhannagar), Kolkata... is quashed,” Justice Ganguly read out from the judgment before a virtually empty courtroom.
Only a handful of journalists and advocates were present since the court is in summer recess. The cricketer had first been allotted 50 cottahs on November 5, 2006, on a 999-year lease on the recommendation of a committee headed by the chief secretary, but had sought a bigger plot citing ICSE rules that stipulated a minimum 60 cottahs for a school.
The state gave him the larger plot without inviting public offers, the PILs alleged. The top court noted that the government was so anxious to oblige Sourav that it gave the new plot “within a month of the application” without verifying whether he had surrendered the previous plot.Sourav’s argument that he needed a bigger plot to comply with ICSE norms was “specious”, the petitioners said, as his trust had already violated rules by accommodating a host of family members.
Among them were wife Dona, brother Snehasish, mother Nirupa and father Chandidas Ganguly, the petitions said. The two others were Arup Chatterjee, a relative, and Dipak Kumar Mitra, a chartered accountant.The top court upheld the petitioners’ claim that the plot had earlier been earmarked for a college as the state had failed to counter the claim.“This court does not find any legitimacy in the action of the government.... We are sorry to hold that in making the impugned allotment... the state has failed to discharge its constitutional role,” Justice Ganguly, who had written the judgment, said.
Before winding up, he said: “I am aware that the allottee is a cricketer of great repute and has led this country to victory in many tournaments, both in India and abroad. I have watched him on television on many occasions and was delighted to see his glorious cover drives and effortlessly lofted shots over the fence.”Then he added: “But as a judge... I must be objective and eschew my likes and dislikes and render justice.”
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