The Punjab and Haryana High Court ordered the Haryana government to take strict action against nearly 4,000 illegal constructions in DLF City, Gurugram, within two months. The court slammed authorities for allowing unplanned development, warning that it could collapse Gurugram’s infrastructure, water supply, transport, and air quality. It also directed civil courts to close unauthorized cases blocking action. The ruling came in response to petitions highlighting violations of zoning laws and building codes, exposing a land mafia nexus.
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CHANDIGARH: The Punjab and Haryana High Court directed the Haryana government to take strict action against nearly 4,000 illegal buildings in DLF City, Gurugram, within two months.
A two-judge bench, including Justice Sureshwar Thakur and Justice Vikas Suri, found that these constructions clearly violated the Zoning Plan, Buildings Bye-laws, and the Haryana Building Code. The court strongly warned that if such illegal and unplanned buildings are not stopped, Gurugram’s entire infrastructure could collapse.
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It mentioned that essential services like clean drinking water, drainage systems, air quality, transportation, electricity, and other basic facilities would be badly affected.
“It is amply clear that a powerful lobby of certain groups/land mafia, are ruining the very basic character of the developed colony in active connivance with the local administration/official respondents that too only because the authorities have turned a blind eye and are permitting such illegal & unauthorised constructions / illegal developments; which are coming up at an alarming rate right under their nose,”
-the Court stated.
This order was passed in response to petitions filed in 2021 by DLF City Residents Welfare Association and DLF-3 Voice. These petitions sought action on a 2018 Action Taken Report regarding complaints against unauthorized buildings. The petitioners argued that such illegal constructions were destroying the original planned development that was supposed to follow official development laws.
The court was informed that even though action had been recommended, the authorities were delaying it unnecessarily. The Haryana government admitted in court that 4,033 General and EWS category plots had been found violating the law. However, the official data also showed that action was taken in only a few cases.
The court also noted that many civil courts had issued stay orders, stopping action against illegal buildings. It pointed out that these courts were granting stays even though they had no legal power to do so under the Haryana Development and Regulation of Urban Areas Act, 1975. The High Court ordered that all such cases in civil courts be closed immediately after giving all concerned parties a chance to be heard.
“The Civil Courts concerned, who are entertaining the civil suits qua those subject matters, in respect whereof, there is a statutory jurisdictional bar (supra), thus are directed to, after considering all the objections against the maintainability of such filed civil suits, to raise an apposite preliminary issue, and to decide the said struck preliminary issue within two months from today.”
The real estate company DLF told the court that the illegal buildings were not constructed by them but by individual plot owners.
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“Therefore, at this stage, vis-a-vis the DLF no attribution can be made that after its raising purportedly unauthorized constructions, qua the said purportedly unauthorized raised constructions becoming handed over to the individual allottees concerned,”
-the Court noted.
The petitioners were represented by Senior Advocates Amit Jhanji and Anand Chhibbar, along with advocates Eliza Gupta, Attevraj Sandhu, and Karan Pathak.
Representing the Haryana government were Additional Advocates General Ankur Mittal and Svaneel Jaswal, along with Senior Deputy Advocate General PP Chahar, Deputy Advocates General Saurabh Mago and Gaurav Bansal, and Assistant Advocate General Karan Jindal.
Other respondents were represented by Senior Advocates Randeep S Rai and Pankaj Jain, along with advocates Pravindra Singh Chauhan, Deepak Sabherwal, Arvind Seth, Anirudh Malhan, Kunal Dawar, Vipul Sharma, Radhika Mehta, Misha Kumar, Sachin Bhardwaj, and Divya Suri.
CASE TITLE:
DLF City Residents Welfare Association and Another vs State of Haryana and Others
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