Conditional building-plan sanction requires compliance with current planning rules before any enforceable construction right arises.

Building plans submitted before the 24 December 1982 restrictions did not create an enforceable right to construct because the Cantonment Board's sanction was conditional on conversion of the land into freehold and payment of conversion charges. The approval was therefore not unconditional or effective until those conditions were met, and the conversion requirement was not severable from the sanction. The Court also treated the later building restrictions and bye-laws as valid planning controls, and held that any fresh sanction had to comply with the regulations in force at the time of sanction. The challenge to rejection of the plans therefore failed.

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Issues: Whether building plans submitted before the introduction of the 24 December 1982 restrictions could be sanctioned without fresh compliance with the later building norms, and whether conversion of old grant land into freehold and payment of conversion charges were conditions precedent to any effective sanction.

Analysis: The plans were never given an unconditional and effective sanction. The resolutions of the Cantonment Board made the sanction operative only after conversion of the land into freehold and deposit of the conversion charges, so the conversion requirement was not severable from the approval of the plans. Until that condition was fulfilled, the applicants acquired no enforceable right to construct. The Court also held that the restrictions introduced on 24 December 1982, modified on 26 March 1984, and later reflected in the 1988 bye-laws were valid measures for controlling overcrowding and urban planning, and that fresh plans, if submitted, had to conform to the regulations in force at the time of sanction.

Conclusion: The petitioners had no right to insist on construction on the basis of the earlier plans, and the later building restrictions applied to any effective sanction.

Final Conclusion: The challenge to the rejection of the building plans failed, and the petitions were not maintainable on the footing that the earlier submissions had created a protected entitlement to construction.

Ratio Decidendi: A building plan does not confer an enforceable right unless the sanction becomes effective in accordance with its conditions, and any fresh sanction must conform to the building regulations lawfully in force at the time of sanction.

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