Pay Rs 1L fine for post office with no public access

CHENNAI: The Madras High Court came down heavily against the postal department for entering into an agreement to build a post office in a place with no public access and directed the department to pay Rs 1 lakh as fine.

“If persons who are discharging public functions remained negligent and recalcitrant like the officials of the postal department, even God cannot save this country,” wrote a division bench of Justice R Subramanian and Justice P Velmurugan, while dismissing the contempt petition preferred by the postal department.

“We leave it to the wisdom of the postal department to initiate appropriate action against those who are responsible for the failure of the project to provide a post office in Coimbatore. The facts in this contempt petition reveal the total lack of sense of responsibility in the officers of the postal department at the relevant point of time,” wrote the bench.

The chief postmaster general Tamil Nadu circle moved the contempt petition in HC against M Leema Rose from Sakethnath and Company, Coimbatore and four others. The petitioner contended that in February 1982, the postal department initiated land-acquiring proceedings to acquire 2 acres in Coimbatore to establish a post office.

However, the land owner (respondents) compromised with the department for providing an alternate site. They also gave undertaking to construct a building of 4,800 square feet consisting of two floors and lease it out to the postal department for 99 years.

In 2009, the land owners moved the HC to direct the department to accept a new alternate site for the post office building.

The land owners submitted that the construction has become almost impossible because of the stand taken by the planning authorities, as there is no public road to access the site. However, the HC dismissed the petition filed by them.

Subsequently, the postal department knocked the door of the HC seeking to initiate contempt proceedings against the land owners. It also claimed that it was ready to accept the building even if it was constructed now.

However, the bench refused to accept the submission as a public utility building should have a public road.

The bench also imposed Rs 1 lakh cost on the postal department for wasting the court’s time since 1985 through various litigations and directed to pay the cost to Adyar

Cancer Institute.