Hindustan Times: Noida: Monday,
April 14, 2014.
Authorities
in Ghaziabad, Noida and Greater Noida are openly violating norms and granting
purchasable FAR (floor area ratio) to real estate developers. This despite a
clear provision in the UP Apartment Act 2010 stating that a developer shall not
make any alterations in the plans, specifications and other particulars without
the previous consent of the allottees.
There are
more than a dozen group housing projects with hundreds of apartments that are
embroiled in various court cases on the issue of illegal sanction of
purchasable FAR.
“First the
developer gets the original building plan sanctioned from an authority and then
sells apartments, promising buyers parks and open green areas. When the project
nears completion, the developer gets the building plan amended with approvals
for additional apartments,” says Harshvardhan, an RWA office-bearer of
Designarch E-homes, a group housing project in Vaishali.
He adds, “So,
not only does possession gets delayed, even the additional construction poses a
serious threat to the structural safety of the building and the open green
areas give way to concrete towers.”
Recently, in
another case of building by-laws violation, the Allahabad High Court while
ironing out the creases in the UP Apartment Act, delivered a landmark judgment
and held that builders cannot change the scheme without the written consent of
all the allottees.
RWA officials
say that another issue of concern is possession without obtaining completion
certificate. The UP Apartment Act categorically says that completion
certificate must be obtained and deed of apartment must be executed and
registered by builder before giving possession.
“When a
developer gets approval for, let’s says 100 flats and constructs 150 flats, the
violation can only come to light when he takes completion certificate from the
development authority concerned. But instead of taking completion certificate,
developers offer possession to buyers. Interestingly completion certificate is
not a mandatory document for the registration of apartments. So even illegal
flats are getting registered with the revenue department everywhere in
Delhi-NCR, says Ashish Kaul, an RTI activist.
Applications
filed under the RTI Act by office bearers of the resident welfare associations
of many group housing projects in Indirapuram have revealed that developers
have built more than the sanctioned number of flats. What is surprising is that
even top banks have extended loans to these ‘illegal’ flats, and the revenue
department of Uttar Pradesh has collected stamp duty as registration fee from
these buyers.
“The reply
from GDA has shocked all the 765 families in our group housing project as only
545 flats have been found to be in accordance with the sanctioned plan. We
don’t know the exact flat numbers assigned to the 220 unauthorised flats
because we didn’t ask for the particulars of the units in our application. Now
we are planning to file another application to get these specific details,”
says Nisha Rai, a resident of one of the five housing projects in Indirapuram.
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