C.W.P No. 11275 of 2010 (O&M) ::1:: IN THE HIGH COURT OF PUNJAB AND HARYANA AT CHANDIGARH C.W.P No. 11275 of 2010 (O&M) Date of decision : December 20, 2010 Jaswinder Kaur Chahal, ...... Petitioner v. State of Punjab and another, ...... Respondents *** CORAM : HON'BLE MR.JUSTICE AJAY TEWARI *** Present : Mr. K.S.Nalwa, Advocate for the petitioner. Mr. S.S.Gill, DAG Punjab for the respondents. *** 1. Whether Reporters of Local Newspapers may be allowed to see the judgment ? 2. To be referred to the Reporters or not ? 3. Whether the judgment should be reported in the Digest ? *** AJAY TEWARI, J (Oral) By way of this writ petition, the petitioner has challenged the cancellation of `fancy number' which was settled in an auction in her favour. The facts are that in response to the public notice for auction of fancy numbers of District Mansa issued by respondent No.2, the petitioner applied for the allotment of one such fancy number along with requisite fee on 7.6.2010. Thereafter, on 9.6.2010 the petitioner participated in the auction through one Pritpal Singh s/o Rajmohinder Singh, and gave highest C.W.P No. 11275 of 2010 (O&M) ::2:: bid of Rs.55,000/- and was allotted No. PB-31H-0001. She thereafter on 12.6.2010 wrote a letter to respondent No.2 to allot her the said number and deposited the remaining amount of Rs.30,000/- by way of demand draft. She even visited the office of respondent No.2 personally but no response was given to her. However, respondent No.2 issued another public notice in the Punjabi Tribune on 17.6.2010 for the auction of fancy numbers including the number which was allotted to the petitioner. The only argument put-forth by counsel for the respondents is that respondent No.2 has been conferred with specific power to refuse to accept the auction which, in his opinion, is for un-realistic low amount of money. As noticed above, the petitioner gave the highest bid of Rs.55,000/-. Counsel for the respondents has drawn the attention of the Court to the fact that Fancy No. PB-31 H-0002 was auctioned for a sum of Rs.1.15 lac and, thus, it was a good ground for respondent No.2 to exercise jurisdiction not to accept the bid. I, however, find that Fancy No.0003 has gone for Rs.19,000/-, No.0006 for Rs.13,000/-, No.0012 for Rs.4500/- and so on so forth. Of-course, some numbers have gone for higher bids viz No.0009 for Rs.81,000/- and No.0011 for Rs.58,500/-. The point is that in no other case has the highest bid been rejected. Just the bald assertion that respondent No.2 had the right not to accept the highest bid and, thus, refused to confirm the same would not cut any ice. No reason has been advanced in the written statement as to what was the basis on which it was felt that the bid of Rs.55,000/- was inordinately low. In the circumstances, this writ petition is allowed and respondent No.2 is directed to accept the C.W.P No. 11275 of 2010 (O&M) ::3:: bid amount of Rs.55,000/- of the petitioner and allot PB-31H-0001 to her within a period of four weeks from today. No costs. ( AJAY TEWARI ) December 20, 2010. JUDGE `kk'