Improvement Trust, Ropar vs Shashi Bala & Anr.
Background
In 1987, a social worker, Shashi Bala, applied to Punjab's Chief Minister for a residential plot under his "discretionary quota," and the Punjab government approved allotment of a plot in principle in 1987, subject to her submitting certain paperwork. The Improvement Trust never actually identified or handed her a specific plot, and years of correspondence went nowhere. She went to the Punjab & Haryana High Court, which, in 2006 and again in 2008, ordered the Trust to allot her a plot. Unknown to those courts, a Full Bench of the same High Court (later upheld by the Supreme Court in a different case, Harsh Dhingra) had already struck down the entire discretionary-quota scheme as unconstitutional, except for people who had already been allotted specific plots and built houses on them before mid-1996.
Decision Breakdown
The Supreme Court held that because Shashi Bala was never actually allotted an identified, specific plot, only a general "approval" for allotment, she did not fall within the narrow group protected by the Full Bench's exceptions, and her claim was therefore wiped out by the declaration that the discretionary quota itself was invalid and violated the constitutional guarantee of equality (Article 14). Since this crucial Full Bench ruling was never brought to the notice of the judges who ordered her allotment, those orders could not stand once the omission was pointed out. The Court set aside both High Court orders in her favour and allowed the Trust's appeal.
Lesson Learnt
A government's informal "in-principle approval" for a benefit like a land allotment does not create an enforceable legal right if the scheme under which it was granted is later found unconstitutional, and courts' decisions can be overturned when a controlling precedent was never brought to the judges' attention.