The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed a petition filed by Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Tejashwi Yadav against a Patna High Court order asking him to vacate the government bungalow allotted to him when he was the deputy chief minister of Bihar, PTI reported.
A bench of Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justices Deepak Gupta and Sanjiv Khanna imposed a fine of Rs 50,000 on Yadav for challenging the High Court decision. The top court also asked him to shift to an accommodation meant for the leader of the Opposition.
On January 7, a division bench of the Patna High Court had rejected Yadav’s appeal challenging a single-judge order from October 6, 2018, which turned down his petition against the state government’s direction to vacate the government bungalow.
“The petitioner has been allotted a bungalow, matching his status as a minister in the government, at 1, Polo Road, Patna,” the order by the single-judge bench had said. “He cannot raise complaint on the decision so taken, simply because the present bungalow is more suited to him.”
Yadav occupies a bungalow at 5, Deshratna Marg, which he was allotted in 2015 when he was appointed deputy chief minister in Nitish Kumar’s government. The Rashtriya Janata Dal later pulled out of the alliance with Kumar’s Janata Dal (United), but Yadav continued to retain the government bungalow.
The state government had asked Yadav to move out of the bungalow to make way for Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi.
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