The Supreme Court on Friday slapped ₹ 50,000 in costs on Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Tejashwi Prasad Yadav for challenging a Bihar government order asking him to vacate the government bungalow allotted to him when he was Deputy Chief Minister of the State.

Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi called Mr. Yadav's efforts in the apex court to quash the order to vacate the bungalow, a waste of precious judicial time.

"What is this luxury of litigation?" Chief Justice Gogoi asked Mr. Yadav's counsel.

Trouble started for Mr. Yadav when the Estate Officer of State’s Building Construction Department asked him in September 2017 to vacate the bungalow at 5, Deshratna Marg.

The bungalow is supposed to be allotted to the current Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi.

Mr. Yadav is the younger son of former Bihar Chief Minister and RJD president Lalu Prasad Yadav. He was deputy CM in November 2015 and had stepped down in July 2017 when Chief Minister Nitish Kumar left the coalition and formed a new government with the Bharatiya Janata Party.

The Patna High Court had turned down the challenge of Mr. Yadav to the State's order to vacate the official building.

On May 7, the Supreme Court had made a scathing judgment, quashing an Uttar Pradesh law giving life-time use of bungalows, privileges and perks to former Chief Ministers of the State. A Bench led by Justice Ranjan Gogoi axed the law, saying a former Chief Minister is only a commoner and not a “special class of citizen”.

The Supreme Court had observed in its May 2018 judgment that the Constitution recognises only “one single class of citizens with one singular voice (vote)”. “A special class of citizens is abhorrent to the constitutional ethos,” the court had held.

The court had observed that “the Chief Minister, once he/she demits the office, is at par with the common citizen, though by virtue of the office held, he/she may be entitled to security and other protocols. But allotment of government bungalow, to be occupied during his/her lifetime, would not be guided by the Constitutional principle of equality”.

“Bungalows constitute public property which by itself is scarce and meant for use of current holders of public offices,” the court had observed. It said it was necessary that public servants should act in a manner which reflected that “ultimate authority is vested in the citizens” and they were eventually accountable to the people.