A group of plot holders of the Suntec City project has approached the Punjab and Haryana high court, seeking to be impleaded as parties in the case and urging it to uphold the partial cancellation of the change of land use (CLU) granted to the project, which is under investigation by the Enforcement Directorate (ED).
The applicants — Jasraj Bhatia, Ankur Bansal and Paramjit Kaur Bhatia — have filed an application seeking the continuation of the order dated August 3, 2024, passed by the director, town and country planning.
Under the order, the department had partially cancelled the CLU, restricting the cancellation to the land belonging to owners who had alleged that their consents for the project had been forged.
The court has allowed their impleadment application and asked other parties to respond by September 23, if they wish to.
The ED is probing ₹348 crore money-laundering and land fraud involving real estate mega-project Suntec City in New Chandigarh, and is focusing on a network of private developers and top-tier bureaucrats.
In their application, the plot holders submitted that information obtained through the Right to Information (RTI) Act from the office of the tehsildar, Kharar, showed that 120 similarly placed persons had purchased plots from the developer.
They argued that any blanket cancellation of the CLU would have serious consequences for the plot buyers, as the land use would revert to agricultural use. According to the applicants, such an action would jeopardise the lifetime savings invested by the buyers and affect their ability to construct houses on the plots.
{{/usCountry}}They argued that any blanket cancellation of the CLU would have serious consequences for the plot buyers, as the land use would revert to agricultural use. According to the applicants, such an action would jeopardise the lifetime savings invested by the buyers and affect their ability to construct houses on the plots.
{{/usCountry}}“If the department had fully cancelled the CLU, the land use would have reverted to agriculture. In such an event, they would have lost their lifetime savings invested in the plots, would have become disentitled to get their building plans approved, the already approved building plans would have become null and void, and they would have been barred from constructing their houses,” the plea stated.
The plot holders have relied on information obtained under the RTI Act from the office of the director, town and country planning, to contend that there has not been a single case since 2014 in which the CLU for an entire project land was cancelled merely because a portion of the land was found to be affected by forged consent.
The applicants cited several cases to support their argument.
In the case of M/s Bajwa Developers Ltd, for instance, the total CLU covered 58.525 acres, but the department cancelled the CLU only for 3.23 acres that was based on allegedly forged consents. The order was passed on November 8, 2021.
The applicants have also referred to cases involving M/s Innovative Housing and Infrastructure Pvt. Ltd and M/s Altus Space Builder Pvt. Ltd, claiming that a similar approach was followed by the department.
They further submitted that the same practice continued even after the Suntec case.
The plea refers to the case of M/s Sunny Lovely Developers Pvt. Ltd., where the promoter was found to have obtained CLU for 1.2 acres on the basis of a forged bank NOC, a fact which was also affirmed by HDFC Bank. Despite this, and keeping in view the interests of the allottees, the department cancelled CLU only for the affected 1.2 acres out of the total 51.4 acres in 2025, the applicants claimed.
The plot holders argued that the Suntec matter was similarly dealt with in accordance with the established departmental practice. They further pointed out that, in the Suntec case, the department had taken an even more stringent action by cancelling the Punjab Apartment and Property Regulation Act licence of the promoter, which, according to them, was not done in the other cases cited in the plea.
The applicants have also relied upon an affidavit filed by the department before the high court on March 25, 2025.
The affidavit, filed by Mandeep Kaur, chief town planner, is cited by the plot holders to argue that the department itself had justified the decision to partially cancel the CLU.
According to the applicants, the affidavit stated that the decision to partially cancel the CLU had been taken while keeping in view the interests of innocent allottees who had invested their hard-earned money in the projects.