Medicity was earlier proposed to be set up on a 45-acre land in Raipur Kalan village. The Administration later shifted the project to near IT Park.

The statement was made after Chief Justice Tirath Singh Thakur said: “There is no difficulty in this case, it is unnecessary. We will dispose of this petition. You simply make a statement that the Administration will invite fresh expressions of interest and the matter will end.”

Gupta took instructions from UT Administrator Gen S F Rodrigues (Retd) and submitted after a while that in view of the change in the site, the Administration had decided to invite fresh expressions of interest for the project.

Gupta, however, made it very clear that the Administration strongly refuted all the allegations levelled by the petitioner, senior advocate H S Grewal.

The court has given liberty to the Administration to contest the locus standi and maintainability of the petition, if the petitioner approaches the court again at a later stage after determining the fresh expressions of interest.

The petitioner has also been given the liberty to file a fresh petition.

Before the matter was disposed of, Gupta strongly condemned the controversy raised by an English newspaper with regard to the Medicity project.

He said: “A strange form of governance has emerged in the UT Administration. Even before ink has dried on an officer’s note and even before the note reaches the Administrator, it reaches the media.”

Gupta was pointing towards a note of dissent given by UT Adviser Pradip Mehra that was published in the daily in question. Gupta submitted that in response to the note, he had given his legal opinion, crossing swords with Mehra.

Contesting the allegations levelled in the PIL, Gupta said the original site (Raipur Kalan) was now planned to be used for a warehousing complex in view of its proximity to the railway station.

“The entire grounds of the case are based entirely on a newspaper’s reports which are worse than a half truth,” he said.

Earlier, Justice Hemant Gupta expressed his opinion while questioning the rationale behind shifting the Medicity project from a little known village to a prime location. “I have glanced through the petition. I have never heard of a village called Raipur Kalan. The place where the site has now been shifted to is a prime location,” Justice Gupta remarked.