Supreme Court allows builders to hand over flats

The Supreme Court today allowed real estate companies to hand over possession of over 3,000 flats in Manesar, Lakhnaula and Naurangpur villages of Gurgaon district, but refused to vacate the stay on further construction in more than 600 acres.

A Bench comprising Justices Anil Dave and RK Agrawal also permitted them to carry out repair works before handing over the possession of flats to the purchasers. On April 14, the court had restrained them from going ahead with construction in the three villages on petitions by farmers that they were fraudulently forced to sell their fertile land for a pittance under the threat of acquisition by the Haryana Government.

At today’s hearing, the Bench asked the state government as to how the authorities had issued building licences to the companies even after initiating proceedings for acquisition of 912 acres in August, 2004.

Appearing for Haryana, Additional Advocate-General Anil Grover said the “the state government is not averse to an investigation. In fact, there has to be some investigation to ascertain the bona fide and mala fide sales and fix responsibility.” The alleged scam had taken place when the Congress was in power.

Among the builders involved in the litigation are ABW Infrastructure Ltd, Metropolis Realtors Pvt Ltd, Flair Realtors Pvt Ltd, Metropolis Infrastructure Pvt Ltd and Angelique International Ltd. All of them have been named as respondents, besides the state government.

Arguing for some of the companies, senior advocates Kapil Sibal, Shyam Divan and Huzefa Ahmadi pleaded for exempting their clients from the stay order as they had bought the land either before the acquisition or after the proceedings had been dropped by the state government in August, 2007.

DLF said it had bought the land in 2008 and constructed 1,400 flats for its members who had paid the cost after taking bank loans. Another company said it had constructed 1,700 flats which were ready for possession.

The companies also pleaded that the stay order should be restricted to 19 acres, which had been owned by the petitioners, instead of more than 600 acres. Acknowledging that going by their contentions it appeared that they were not involved in the “fraud,” the Bench asked them to submit all relevant details before the next hearing on July 21 to enable it to modify its April 14 order, if necessary.

According to the petitioners, the state government had issued notifications on August 27, 2004, for acquiring 912 acres in the three villages for the construction of Devi Lal Industrial Township, comprising residential, recreational and other public utilities. The final award for acquiring 688 acres was to be announced on August 26, 2007, but the state government dropped the acquisition proceedings just two days prior to this.

The affected farmers contended that state government had kept the acquisition proceedings alive for three years (2004-07) just to help the builders buy their fertile land “at throwaway prices under the threat of acquisition.” They said they had been deprived of their farm land as a part of a conspiracy between politicians, bureaucrats, revenue authorities and private builders owning real estate companies.