A florist has filed a writ petition in the Madras High Court alleging that the secretariat in the Raj Bhavan was yet to settle his dues to the tune of ₹1.82 lakh for having supplied flowers between December 2014 and June 2015 when Konijeti Rosaiah was in office as the Governor of the State.
Justice C.V. Karthikeyan has granted time till January 28 for government counsel to get instructions from the Deputy Secretary to the Governor and the comptroller of Governor’s household on the issue.
Sterling Flowers, represented by its manager Basheer Ahmed, of Pammal, filed the case.
Regular supplier
In his affidavit, Mr. Ahmed said that he had been a regular supplier of flowers, hybrid flowers and decoration articles to the Raj Bhavan for over 15 years. He reportedly supplied flowers on many occasions on credit despite the accumulation of dues, which ran to a few lakh rupees. According to the petitioner, as many as eight invoices raised by him between December 2014 and June 2015 for a total amount of ₹2.82 lakh remained unsettled for long. Subsequently, the Raj Bhavan paid him ₹1 lakh, but did not settle the rest despite sending several reminders till September 2019, he claimed. “Finally, because of delayed payments from respondent Raj Bhavan and financial difficulties, I was forced to stop the supply of flowers... Because of the delay, I have suffered financial loss and incurred interest for the amount which I had borrowed for supplying flowers to the Raj Bhavan,” his affidavit read.
The petitioner sought a direction to Raj Bhavan officials to settle the outstanding dues with interest at the rate of 10.5% per annum.
