News: Gurugram: Apartment owners to challenge de-licensing of project land in court-05-10-2020
https://www.hindustantimes.com/gurugram/gurugram-apartment-owners-to-challenge-de-licensing-of-project-land-in-court/story-ddcMc3s4PYvk5nSYpqAsRO.html
Gurugram: Apartment owners to challenge de-licensing of project land in court
A section of homebuyers has decided to challenge the recently amended Haryana land law that allowed retrospective rescinding of land permits for projects.
The federation of apartment owners association (FAOA) said the amendment allowed developers to change their projects, and the department of town and country planning (DTCP) to act arbitrarily.
The Punjab and Haryana high court had, in July, quashed DTCP orders to de-license land for constructing a residential complex and allowing a commercial complex to come up instead. De-licensing here meant that a part of the land for which a residential licence was issued was taken out of the purview of the residential licence. The CBI, on the directions of Punjab and Haryana high court, registered a case in this matter and found 54 similar cases of de-licensing.
On August 26, the Haryana government passed a bill amending the Haryana Development and Regulation of Urban Areas (HDRUA) Act and retrospectively validating and allowing DTCP to de-license.
“This amendment will allow for correcting illegalities in the past and prior to this there was no allowance for delicensing the project. This is a way to pardon all wrongs committed by developers. The project plans have specifications but these are violated everywhere. We need to stop this illegality. The politicians and bureaucrats are not interested in helping buyers,” said Lt Gen (retd) SK Bahri, who the chairperson of the federation, adding it would jeopardise the interest of home buyers.
The federation said that they have approached buyers’ associations, RWA in Gurugram, NCR and across the country to pool resources and generate funds so that this law could be challenged in court.
Sanjay Lal, vice president of Ambience Lagoon RWA, said that the amended clause would give developers to act in whatever manner they please as there would be no representation regarding the proposed layout in case of apartment and no guiding factor to adjudge the completion of promised development works. “We will challenge this amendment in court and for that matter we have launched the drive to collect funds as we have no option but to approach higher courts,” he said.
Praveen Jain, chairman, National Real Estate Development Council said that interests of buyers would not be affected as only those projects can be delicensed where property has not been sold. “How will the buyers get affected when third party right are not created,” said Jain.
A senior DTCP official, when asked about the matter said that amendment does not impact the interests of the buyers but they had every right to approach the court.
