MUMBAI : Bombay high court has upheld Bombay Parsi Punchayat’s criteria to identify a “poor, needy and deserving Parsi” as one who does not earn more than Rs 90,000 a month or has assets exceeding Rs 25 lakh. Such a person is not entitled to a flat meant to house the poor , the court said.

While India’s per capita income for 2013-14 was Rs 74,380, only those spending below Rs 816/month in rural areas and Rs 1,000/month in urban areas came below the poverty line.

The HC recently dismissed Dahanu resident Rohinton Taraporewala’s plea against the non-allotment of a flat in a community housing scheme at Panthaki Baug, Andheri. His petition said in Vangaon, where he resides, there are very basic hospital facilities. Also, he said he preferred to be in Mumbai as he had high blood pressure, heart and prostate problems and diabetes while his wife suffered from depression and anxiety. The punchayat countered him, saying he was “adequately housed” in a two-storey, 2,000-square-foot bungalow, was not a resident of Mumbai and “on his own showing lived at Dahanu, close to the Gujarat border”. Further, it pointed out that Taraporewala’s son and daughter were settled in the UK and the US with their families.

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The trustees said they had adopted the criteria after the high court in October 2009 allowed them to sell flats in two buildings on an ownership basis. Also, that preference was to be given to those who wanted to settle down after marriage. In their order, a division bench of Justices S J Vazifdar and Revati Mohiti Dere noted that Taraporewala had an income far in excess of Rs 90,000 as well as assets worth a lot more than Rs 25 lakh. They said his application form for allotment of a flat itself discloses that he owns 17 acres of land outside Mumbai, which he has valued at Rs 51 lakh.

“It is, in fact, doubtful if the land is worth only Rs 51 lakh. The fact that it is ancestral land makes no difference. The petitioner admittedly owns the same,’’ the judges wrote. They also noted that Taraporewala’s income-tax returns indicated a net income of over Rs 11 lakh for 2008-09. “The petitioner is, therefore, neither poor nor needy nor deserving for the allotment of a flat. The petitioner, therefore, is not entitled to an allotment as per the criteria,” the court ruled.

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The judges declined to hear Taraporewala’s challenge to the trustees’ decision to reserve 26 flats as a transit accommodation for the poor, needy and deserving Parsis whose flats are undergoing repairs. “Even assuming that the same is contrary to an order of the division bench of this court, we are not inclined to exercise our writ jurisdiction at the instance of the petitioner, who admittedly does not fulfill the criteria of a poor, needy and deserving Parsi,’’ the judges concluded.

