The petitioner has approached this Court aggrieved by the inaction on the part of the respondent in processing Ext.P10 application submitted by the petitioner for issuance of an Ownership Certificate. The facts stated in the writ petition would indicate that the petitioner had effected additional constructions on a building that was constructed earlier and had applied for issuance of an Occupancy Certificate as early as in the year 2012. The Occupancy Certificate eventually came to be granted only on 10.01.2020. In the meanwhile, a dispute arose between the petitioner and the respondent Corporation with regard to payment of the property tax in respect of the building, in respect of which the Occupancy Certificate was issued only in 2020. The petitioner took a stand by placing reliance on the judgment of this Court in Sheela v. Kollam Municipal Corporation [2017(4)KLT 887] that it was not liable to pay property tax in respect of the period prior to the date of issuance of the Occupancy Certificate. The respondent Corporation, however, refused to accept the said stand, inter alia, on the ground that an appeal was pending against the judgment of the Single Judge referred above, before the Division Bench. Be that as it may, the petitioner subsequently applied for Ownership Certificate for the purposes of submitting before the authorities concerned for obtaining the NABH accreditation. The respondent Corporation, however, refused to issue the Ownership Certificate by citing the pendency of the dispute regarding payment of property tax.
