RESIDENTS WELFARE ASSOCIATION Vs. UNION TERRITORY OF CHANDIGARH

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Petitioner is the Residents Welfare Association, Sector 10, Chandigarh.

(2.) Instant petition has been filed in public interest seeking issuance of directions to restrain the official respondents/Chandigarh Administration from permitting residential plots in the Union Territory of Chandigarh to be constructed or utilised as apartments. It has been asserted that such activity is not permitted and rather expressly barred under the existing rules, regulations and by-laws of the UT Administration. In the year 2001, Chandigarh Administration notified rules called the Chandigarh Apartment Rules, 2001 (hereinafter 'the Apartment Rules) whereby even 'single residential units' could be sub divided into apartments. There was a huge outcry against the provision for having apartments on the grounds that such activity would completely alter and finish the character of the city and the existing infrastructure in terms of sewerage, water, electricity, parking, traffic etc. was wholly insufficient to take on the extra load. Under such situation the Apartment Rules were repealed vide Notification dated 01.10.2007. Inspite thereof a large number of 'single residential units' are being surreptitiously converted into apartments. The residential plots being self contained units cannot be further sub divided into separate units and neither sale of independent units even floor-wise is permissible. A modus is stated to be rampant in the City whereby a builder/developer purchases the entire 'residential unit' and thereafter seeks three individual people/families, inducing them to buy apartments in such composite residential unit viz. Apartment No.1 which normally comprises of the ground floor along with basement, apartment No.2 which is the first floor and apartment No.3 which is the second floor along with roof rights/barsati. To put such modus in operation, 50% share of the residential unit is got registered in the name of the person choosing to pick up apartment No.1, 30% share in lieu of apartment No.2 and 20% share in lieu of apartment No.3. Thereafter these three separate investors/buyers are made to enter into an internal Memorandum Of Understanding regulating the manner in which the separate floors constructed on one single residential unit are to be utilised.

(3.) Mr.Puneet Bali, Senior Advocate has advanced submissions on behalf of the petitioner-association and at the very outset has clarified that he is confining the scope of the petition only to residential buildings. He has briefly touched upon the historic perspective. It is submitted that in March, 1948 the then Government of Punjab in consultation with the Government of India approved the site for the new Capital in the State i.e. Chandigarh. The town was initially planned as an Administrative Town for a population of 5 lakhs and built in two phases. Sectors 1 to 30 formed the first phase and sectors 31 to 47 constituted the second phase of its development. The City was planned on the principles underlying four major city functions i.e. Living, Working, Care of Body and Spirit and Circulation. The renowned French Architect Le Corbusier conceived the Master Plan of Chandigarh. The first phase seen as the City's 'Historic Core' was designed for a population of 1.5 lakhs in low rise plotted development, phase II from Sectors 31 to 47 was for the remaining targeted population of 3.5 lakhs with an increase in the ratio of smaller plots/lesser open areas/nearly four times increase in density. With the coming up of Mohali, a new town on the South of Chandigarh, the gap between Phase II and Mohali was planned as Phase III of Chandigarh in order to integrate and promote planned development and to continue the sectoral grid and for the development of the land falling between Phase II and Mohali. Phase III comprises of Group Housing Schemes and four storeyed flats built by the Chandigarh Housing Board and Cooperative House Building Societies instead of plots and resulting in higher densities.