Gurgaon court to hear Palam Vihar residents’ petition against demolition of houses

The residents said the MCG did not inform them that a part of their houses would be demolished

The district court in Gurgaon on Tuesday admitted petitions by two residents of Block C of Palam Vihar against possible demolition of a part of their houses by the Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG).

Two Palam Vihar residents moved court after MCG threatened to demolish their houses which came in the way of a project. (Parveen Kumar/HT Photo)

Two property owners, Suresh Gupta and Somenath Ghosh, moved separate petitions seeking urgent relief from court in view of the threat of MCG demolishing their residences.

Gupta’s case was registered in the court of judge Indu Bala and the date of hearing fixed on July 1. Ghosh’s petition, moved in the court of judge Ashish Arya, was heard on Tuesday and the date of hearing fixed on Wednesday.

A week ago, residents of around 20-25 peripheral houses of Block C had spotted cross marks on their boundary walls and MCG engineers had informed them that parts of the building would be demolished.

Abhishek Singh, counsel of both the petitioners, said, “In order to get urgent relief from possible demolition, we moved two petitions that were assigned to two different courts. Judge Indu Bala registered the petition and gave us July 1 as the next date of hearing. In another court, judge Ashish Arya will hear our petition on Wednesday and has asked MCG and Ansal API (to be present) for the hearing. We believe the admittance of our petition is a relief in the sense that the corporation will not initiate any action since the matter is sub-judice.”

“We took the plea that the residents-cum-applicants are bonafide property owners of plots allotted by Ansal API, which developed the colony in 1986-87. Also, the MCG did not send notice to the individual owners, but to Ansal API, which did not inform the owners. The residents are worried after finding the cross marks on their houses and verbal intimation by MCG men,’ said the counsel. He added that Palam Vihar is a Haryana government-approved colony.

Officials of the MCG and the district revenue department had earlier claimed to have found a portion of these houses falling in the alignment of a proposed railway overbridge at Bajghera crossing between Palam Vihar and New Palam Vihar.