Chennai: The Madras high court has directed authorities to carry out on or before March 31, 2015, fresh auctioning of the 26 shops in the Koyambedu Wholesale Market Complex, which were allotted under the discretionary quota by former DMK minister Parithi Elamvazhuthi.

A division bench, comprising Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice M Sathyanarayanan, gave the directive while disposing of a batch of appeals and petitions from advocate K. Karthikeyan and others.The bench said it was not in dispute that no methodology was followed for making allotment of the shops in question, except the so-called discretion of the minister as chairman.


The legal position was quite clear and thus, it was agreed that to resolve the issue, the only appropriate course would be to have a proper advertisement, which would facilitate an advance notice to all concerned, that the shops would be put to auction and thereafter, the bids were opened and allotment was made.

“We, thus, dispose of the appeal and petitions with a direction to carry out the fresh exercise of auction of the shops, as per the norms to be circulated and the needful should be done or before March 31, 2015,” the bench added.The bench said that the amounts deposited by the concerned parties till date should be refunded to the parties within 15 days from Monday with interest, if any accrued.


According to petitioners, the auction in respect of these 26 shops located in prime areas of the market, was postponed and finally cancelled.It appears that Mr Parithi Ellamvazhuthi, the then minister for information, publicity, town planning, urban development and CMDA had issued orders on July 10, 2009, for creating 15 per cent reservation within the available shops under the control of CMDA.


The 26 shops were allotted under this chairman’s discretionary quota. It was shocking that without setting any guidelines for allotment of state largesse and without formulating any procedure for examining the application or notifying the availability of the discretionary quota, the minister had made all these allotments, they added.