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U.P. Housing and Development Board v. Ramesh Chandra Agarwal

Civil Appeal · 2019 INSC 614Decided 1 May 2019
Civil Appeal No. 4529 of 2019
Dr. Justice D.Y. Chandrachud · Justice Hemant Gupta

Background

The respondent registered in 1982 for a plot/flat under an Economically Weaker Sections housing scheme of the U.P. Housing and Development Board, paying a modest registration fee. Under the Board's own Registration Booklet and its 1979 Rules, mere registration never guaranteed an allotment: a registered applicant had to separately submit written consent to participate whenever a specific scheme's draw of lots was advertised, which the respondent never did. After staying silent for over a decade, the respondent filed a consumer complaint in 1993, and the dispute wound through consumer fora for over 20 years, eventually reaching the National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission (NCDRC), which in 2018 directed the Board to allot the respondent a specific flat for a fixed price of Rs 2,50,000.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court held that the Board's Rules and Registration Booklet made clear that registration alone created no entitlement to allotment, and that the respondent, who never submitted the required consent letters for any draw of lots and remained inactive for years, including being absent for all eight hearing dates before the State Commission, had no vested right to a flat. The Court found the NCDRC's direction to allot a specific flat at a specific price to be an arbitrary exercise unsupported by any contractual basis, since a public authority like the Board cannot be compelled to enter into a contract it never agreed to on terms it never offered. The appeal was allowed and the NCDRC's order was set aside.

Lesson Learnt

Registering for a government housing/allotment scheme does not by itself create a legal right to be allotted a house or plot: applicants must actively comply with the scheme's own procedural requirements (such as submitting consent for a draw of lots when advertised), and consumer fora cannot invent allotment terms a public body never agreed to.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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