While
construction of housing projects has been restricted in Noida Extension due to
the latest NGT order, another order in 2013 affected several projects in the
eco-sensitive zone around the Okhla Bird Sanctuary.
By Mr. Ashutosh Limaye, National Director –
Research, JLL India
A National Green Tribunal (NGT) order in 2013 and yet
another recent one have collectively had a greater negative impact on home
buyers in the National Capital Region (NCR) than on the developer community.
While home buyers were caught unawares and continue to remain jittery with the
resultant delay in possessing their dream homes, these two NGT orders reveal
the apathy authorities and developers have towards buyers.
In one case, several builders having projects adjacent to
the eco-sensitive zone (ESZ) around Okhla Bird Sanctuary have not been able to
hand over possession of homes for the last year-and-a-half due to the October
2013 order of NGT, which stopped Noida Authority from giving completion
certificates to projects within a 10 km radius of the sanctuary. By latest
estimates, more than 50,000 apartment buyers in Noida have been affected by
this order.
In the second case – a recent NGT order – developers not
adhering to the 2010 guidelines of the Ministry of Environment and Forests
(MOEF) have been restricted from finishing their construction projects in Noida
Extension. The guidelines outlined in the order are related to checking
pollution during construction activities, and the precautions that need to be
taken by the builders.
Many realtors in Noida and Greater Noida did not follow
MOEF-2010 guidelines during construction because there was no way for the local
pollution watchdog and other concerned authorities to monitor their activities.
According to some media reports, construction work in 20 projects (80 towers)
which were already delayed by 2-3 years will be further delayed, affecting the
buyers in these projects.
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| Ashutosh Limaye, JLL India |
Many buyers have paid close to the entire amount for
their homes in these locations, but in the
light of these NGT orders, they do not know when they will be able to move into
their new homes or even sell off their apartments. A few years ago, Noida
Extension had seen farmers protesting against land acquisition in the area, which had
led to all construction activity coming to a halt in 2011. The final order on
the land acquisition is pending with the Supreme Court.
All such cases have been affecting market sentiment
negatively in the last few years. Buyers in NCR are unsure about getting early
relief, since developers halt work as soon as any new court ruling comes in and
is fully understood by them. Court cases, on the other hand, tend to drag on
for very long in the Indian judiciary system. End users not only have to
shoulder the burden of paying EMIs but also their ongoing monthly rentals,
while simultaneously remaining unsure of when they will start getting returns
on their capital values.
Likewise, developers cannot be sure of court rulings
halting their work even on land parcels they have purchased directly
from the government. Such land is considered to be free of all issues and as
having clear titles; however, as the Okhla case shows, they too can do face the
brunt of uncertainty, and deserve to be heard.
Already, developers in India need countless approvals, and
the several steps that must be taken to obtain construction permits can take as
much as two years. The World Bank’s 2014 report on ‘Dealing with Construction
Permits’ ranks India 184th out of 189 countries.
In the case of the Noida Extension, if the builders have
not adhered to pollution control norms, they should be penalized for damaging
the environment and causing pollution during construction. However, the
administration has inarguably also been caught sleeping and evidently needs to
do a much better job after this NGT order.
Having a centralized approval and monitoring system at the
state level is of utmost importance in India. A nodal body – in this case,
Noida Authority – that can also coordinate with central government agencies and
the NGT as and when required, as also become the facilitation centre for both
developers and buyers. Such an approach can centralize all land records and
surveys, applicable rules and regulations, etc.
As for the Okhla case, aggrieved home buyers do have recourse even at this
stage. They can refer to the January 2014 Supreme Court ruling in a Mumbai case
where buildings had come up on plots labelled as private forest land. The court
had heavily criticized the Maharashtra government for bad administration and
noted that it is unfair for buyers or residents to bear the brunt when the
state showed no intention of taking over the land in the past several years. In
this case, the judiciary decided in favour of home buyers, and this paved the
way for regularization of these projects.
Another case home buyers could look at, is the Campa Cola
compound – ahousing society located at Worli in
central Mumbai – that became a classic example of skewed development and a
much-discussed builder-civic administration nexus as developers had constructed
35 illegal floors across seven buildings in the project when they were
permitted to build only five.
Home buyers had paid all the legal dues
to the government and yet got entangled in a long-drawn legal battle. The SC’s
January 2015 ruling though, was a favourable solution for buyers as it directed
the beleaguered residents to seek regularisation of their flats by filing a
fresh application with the state government and the civic body.
Cases in which the government regularized illegal
structures or buildings without all necessary approvals bowing to populist and
political pressure are of Ulhasnagar and Kalyan-Dombivli, both part of suburban
Mumbai. More than 1.13 lakh buildings were identified as illegal in Ulhasnagar
before a special law regularized most of them in 2006.
In August 2006, the Bombay high court, acting on a public
interest litigation (PIL), had directed the demolition of all unauthorized
structures under the jurisdiction of Kalyan-Dombivli’s civic body, following
which the government regularized around 67,900 irregular constructions through
an ordinance and incorporating some or the other penalty in the law.
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