Apartments issue: SC moved against survey order in Chandigarh

Petitioner argues there is no prohibition on multiple individuals, even from distinct families, buying residential units, with a caveat that the construction of the home is done as a single entity

A Sector-27 resident has approached the Supreme Court against the high court’s directions to the Chandigarh administration to carry out a survey to identify residential properties partially sold to a person outside the family of the original owner.

The high court had asked the Chandigarh administration to carry out a survey to identify residential properties partially sold to a person outside the family of the original owner.

The plea by Mamta Gupta was taken up by the bench of justices LN Rao and Aniruddha Bose on Monday. However, the detailed order of the proceedings is awaited.

Gupta’s argument is that there is no prohibition on multiple individuals, even from distinct families, buying residential units, with a caveat that the construction of the home must be done in a cohesive manner and as a single entity.

Once the plans of a house are passed and construction approved by the relevant authorities, how the individual residents within the house reside is firmly within the fundamental right of privacy of those individuals and it would be impermissible for the authorities to adjudicate who must live within the confines of such a house, she has argued, further adding that such a survey should not have been ordered amid the pandemic.

The high court last month had sought a survey of properties sold in Chandigarh since December 31, 2019, wherein shares to the extent of 50%, 30% or 20% have been transferred to a person outside the family of the original owner. The court also asked for a physical inspection of such identified buildings to find out as to whether the sale has actually translated into the buyers occupying an independent floor in the otherwise composite dwelling unit.

The order had come on a batch of petitions pending since 2016 seeking prohibitory orders on conversion of residential plots into apartments by selling them floor-wise to multiple owners. While the administration has maintained that no permission is being granted, the HC bench itself scanned newspapers and noted that 24 such advertisements scouting for purchasers/investors for separate floors were found on a single day in an English daily.