Chandigarh: Suntec City’s licence cancelled, High Court told

Chandigarh: More than six years after the licence was granted to M/s Indian Co-operative Housing Building Society Ltd to develop “Suntec City” on 108.58 acres of land in New Chandigarh, the “competent authority” has cancelled it. When several petitions on the issue came up for hearing before a division bench of Justices Arun Palli and Vikram Agarwal, the state counsel said an affidavit has been filed by GMADA senior town planner Harpreet Kaur in this regard. The bench also referred to another status report, which said that the promoters were directed to submit the original consent letter for the disputed area, but they failed to do so. The ownership/title of the petitioners over the disputed area of ​​27.78 acres in one village and 2.71 acres in another village was established and verified, and now it is not part of the change of land use (CLU) granted earlier to the promoters.

It also said that due to the cancellation of the licence, the promoters were directed to submit a revised layout plan and obtain approval for the same. They were also directed not to carry out development activity on the remaining project area. Petitioners’ counsel Charanpal Singh Bagri and Gurjit Kaur Bagri, however, argued that partial alteration or amendment in CLU is not permissible under the Punjab Regional Town Planning and Development Act and the authorities should cancel the CLU permissions altogether. The court found that the Punjab Real Estate Regulatory Authority (RERA) registered the project without considering the fact that the promoters have also failed to submit the joint development agreement or collaboration agreement, which is a clear violation of the Punjab State Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Rules, 2017.

The bench said that during the hearing, the additional advocate general of Punjab shared a communication issued by RERA to the promoters on August 5, which stated “whereby a notice has been issued for cancellation of registration of the project ‘District Seven’ under Section 7(1)(b)(c) and (d) of the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016”. And a period of 30 days has been granted to furnish the reply, if any, after which appropriate orders will be passed in this regard. The bench was also informed that an FIR was lodged on November 19, 2022 at Mullanpur police station against four accused-Ajay Sehgal, Suresh Kumar Bajaj, Rajesh Girdhar and Ashish Kamra under sections 420, 467, 468, 471, 472 and 120-B IPC for cheating and other offences. During the interrogation of Sehgal, documents relating to a plot measuring 250 sq. yard allegedly sold by the accused/accused’s company from the land of petitioner Balwinder Singh were examined. The state counsel submitted that Bajaj is evading arrest and proceedings to declare him a proclaimed offender have begun.