E-Paper
Supreme Court stays HC order to vacate GMSH chemist
Also bars Chandigarh administration from leasing out chemist shop until further orders; the chemist, Sunil Kumar Jain, had approached the apex court, challenging the February 14 order issued by the HC bench of justice Rajbir Sehrawat.
The Supreme Court on Friday stayed the order of the Punjab and Haryana high court that gave liberty to the Chandigarh administration to vacate and freshly lease out the sole chemist shop at Government Multi-Specialty Hospital (GMSH) in Sector 16.
The chemist, Sunil Kumar Jain, had approached the apex court, challenging the February 14 order issued by the HC bench of justice Rajbir Sehrawat.
Admitting the plea, the three-member SC bench, including Chief Justice Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud, justice Pamidighantam Sri Narasimha and justice JB Pardiwala, said, “SC stays the direction of the HC insofar as it permits the Chandigarh administration to lease out the shop till the next date of hearing. We also direct that till the next date of listing, the Chandigarh administration shall not act in breach of the order of injunction, passed on December 14, 2022, by the lower court.”
Appearing for the chemist before the apex court, advocates Gaurav Chopra and Munish Dewan had submitted, “The consequence of HC’s direction will effectively be to dispossess the petitioner from the premises of the shop though there is an injunction dated December 14, 2022, operating in his favour.”
On December 14, the court of civil judge (junior division) Jaspreet Singh Minhas had restrained the health department from dispossessing the chemist from the hospital premises.
A day after HC’s February 14 decision, the UT administration had vacated the encroached passage and restored the load-bearing wall. Besides clearing the public passage, the UT administration had also submitted a written complaint to the Sector-17 station house officer to lodge an FIR against the chemist for encroachment of the passage, and posing serious risk to human lives and public property. UT had also invited bids to lease out the shop afresh.
In further action, on February 17, the administration slapped a fine of ₹31.8 crore on the shop owner as damages.
After the SC order, UT health secretary Yashpal Garg said, “The administration will submit a reply to the court at the next hearing scheduled on February 24. We will abide by the SC order.”
Same chemist held lease for 29 years
The chemist shop, the only one at the hospital, first came into the spotlight in the second week of September after an inspection by the UT health department found that it was being operated by the same firm for 29 long years through multiple extensions and renewals, and at minimal rent as compared to market price.
The shop was allotted to Sunil Kumar Jain on lease for only two years through an auction in 1993. While the first lease ended in 1995, the hospital authorities never floated a fresh tender and continued to extend the lease every five years, with the latest extension occurring in 2019 – for up to 2024, the inspection had found.
The UT health department had also contended that the chemist had illegally extended the shop by merging the adjacent passage, thereby doubling its size, before issuing show-cause and lease termination notices.
