Personal agenda: Kerala High Court slaps ₹10 lakh fine on Thrissur BJP councillors and their lawyer

The Kerala High Court recently dismissed two appeals filed by six BJP (Bharatiya Janta Party) councillors of the Thrissur Corporation and their lawyer for making frivolous allegations against the Corporation's decision to lease out a tourist home owned by it [Vinod Pollanchery & ors v State of Kerala & ors].A division bench of Justice Amit Rawal and Justice PV Balakrishnan directed the councillors to jointly pay ₹5 lakh and their lawyer to pay an additional ₹5 lakh within a month after noting that the litigation was motivated by personal agenda and animosity. The Court observed that such cases filed without genuine legal grounds wasted the Court's time, obstructed the Corporation from carrying out it's duties for the public and affected the functioning of local bodies."Such kind of litigation smells biasness and settlement of personal agenda against the other Councillors as well as the Mayor. The court should not be made a platform/ground, by encouraging such litigation. Instead, the role of the court is to mitigate the genuine grievances recognized in law, much less violation of the fundamental rights. None of the ingredients, as culled out in the various judgments, are made out either in the writ petition filed by the Councillors or in the complaint filed by the Advocate before the Ombudsman.", the Court added..The tourist home had been leased out to a licensee named Omana Asokan, from 1990 till 2020.After 2020, the Corporation made several attempts to lease out the premises through public auction but failed due to the tenders not meeting the conditions.Finally in September 2022, fresh tenders were invited.Five bidders including Omana Asokan submitted offers, with her bid being the lowest. The highest bid came from Janeesh PS, who quoted ₹7.25 lakh, who later raised it to ₹7.5 lakh after negotiations.Janeesh also undertook to spend ₹3 crore from his own funds on renovation, without reimbursement and the Corporation Council ratified the Mayor's decision to hand over the building to him for renovation and operation.Six BJP councillors, Vinod Pollanchery, Poornima Suresh, Aathira V, Radhika NV, Niji KG, and N Prasad, challenged this before the Kerala High Court.However, their petitions and a subsequent appeal were dismissed by the Court with liberty to approach the Government under Section 57 of the Kerala Municipality Act, 1994 (power to suspend or cancel resolutions of municipal councils).In the meantime, advocate Pramod K, representing the councillors, lodged a complaint before the Ombudsman for Local Self-Government Institutions, raising similar allegations.This led to interim orders preventing the handover of the property pending verification of the tender process.The councillors then approached the government under Section 57 but the government rejected their statutory appeal citing the resolutions to be legally valid and passed by a majority of the council. Aggrieved, the councillors again moved the High Court challenging the government's order, while advocate Pramod moved against the Ombudsman's order and both petitions were heard together and dismissed by a single-judge.Subsequently they filed the present writ appeals before the division bench stating that the tender process was flawed and that the renovation should have been carried out by the corporation itself..However, the Court observed that the corporation had lawfully awarded the licence and that Janeesh had complied with all terms including payment of rent and furnishing of bank guarantees.It noted that even after failing in the earlier proceedings, the councillors and their lawyer were repeatedly dragging the matter through multiple rounds of litigation to prevent the corporation from doing its work for the public and generating revenue..Consequently, the writ appeals were dismissed and costs were imposed on both appeals, with ₹5 lakh to be paid to the Mediation and Conciliation Centre of the High Court by the councillors, and ₹5 lakh to the Bar Association of the High Court by their counsel..Advocates Anand Kalyanakrishnan, G Sreekumar (Chelur) and C Dheeraj Rajan appeared for the appellants.Advocates Santhosh P Poduval represented Thrissur Corporation, while Senior Advocate R Lakshmi Narayan along with advocate Navaneeth D Pai appeared for Janeesh..[Read Judgment]