Gaur City Centre: Allahabad HC upholds UP-Rera order, backs shop buyers’ claim for relief

The Allahabad High Court dismissed Gaursons Hi-Tech's petitions, upholding orders favoring buyers in the Gaur City Centre project for delays.

The Lucknow bench of the Allahabad high court has dismissed a batch of petitions filed by Gaursons Hi-Tech Infrastructure and refused to interfere with orders passed by the Uttar Pradesh Real Estate Regulatory Authority (UP-Rera) and the Real Estate Appellate Tribunal (REAT) in favour of shop buyers at the developer’s Gaur City Centre project in Greater Noida West.

The dispute arose from complaints filed by individual allottees who had booked commercial shops at Gaur City Centre in Sector 4, Greater Noida West. (HT Archive)

In four similar cases, Justice Prashant Kumar upheld the findings that the project remained incomplete well beyond the committed timelines and that buyers were entitled to possession along with statutory interest for the delay.

The appeals were reserved on November 26, 2025, and pronounced on January 21.

Manoj Gaur, promoter of the Gaur City Centre project, said the company would comply with the order.

“We argued in court that we had completed the project on time and obtained deemed approval. But the high court did not accept our plea. We will honour the order and implement it. We will not challenge it in a higher court,” Gaur said.

The dispute arose from complaints filed by individual allottees who had booked commercial shops at Gaur City Centre in Sector 4, Greater Noida West. The bookings were made under possession-linked payment plans, under which buyers paid about 30% to 50% of the total amount upfront, with the remaining sum payable at the time of possession.

However, possession was not offered within the stipulated period, prompting the allottees to approach UP-Rera between 2021 and 2022. Spot inspection reports confirmed that construction and related amenities remained incomplete even years after the contractual possession dates.

UP-Rera directed the developer to complete the project, obtain the occupancy certificate, hand over shops to buyers, execute sale deeds and pay interest for the delay at MCLR plus 1%, excluding the Covid period.

These directions were later upheld by REAT.

Gaursons Hi-Tech challenged the tribunal’s orders before the high court. However, the appeals were filed with delays ranging from several weeks to over seven months. The developer attributed the delay to difficulties in retrieving electronic records due to alleged malware attacks; a claim rejected by both the tribunal and the high court.

Dismissing the appeals, the high court said the explanations were vague and unsupported, and showed a lack of reasonable diligence.

Referring to several Supreme Court judgments, the court reiterated that delay cannot be condoned as a matter of generosity and that courts must distinguish between a genuine explanation and a mere excuse. It also held that there was no legal infirmity in the concurrent findings of UP-Rera and REAT, which were based on inspection reports and contractual terms.

With the dismissal of the appeals as time-barred, the UP-Rera orders in favour of the shop buyers have attained finality. Legal observers said the ruling reinforces the RERA framework and sends a clear signal that developers cannot indefinitely delay possession in possession-linked commercial projects while retaining buyers’ funds.