Developer Accord Builders was recently hit with an exemplary cost of Rs. 1 Lakh by the Bombay High Court for allotting a rehab tenement without holding a lottery in front of an assistant registrar of cooperative societies from the Slum Redevelopment Authority (SRA). The SRA’s Slum Rehabilitation Program in Kurla, Mumbai, is at the center of this dispute. The developer had four unoccupied rehab tenements and 21 qualified slum inhabitants waiting to be assigned after 438 qualifying slum people were housed in the rehab building. The petitioner was not included in the rehab tenement assignment procedure, even though they were eligible. In a proposal that was sent to the Assistant Registrar of Co-operative Societies (SRA) on July 21, 2021, the developer claimed that the petitioners qualified for rehab tenement no. D-1508, which was up for assignment. The developer asked the Assistant Registrar to designate an officer to oversee the tenement’s lottery-based distribution. On this idea, however, no decision was taken.
On March 1, 2022, while the proposal was still pending, the developer sent a letter to the Assistant Registrar claiming that four rehab tenements were set aside for particular qualified slum residents, among them Sangita Balu Zimal. The developer promised that these people will receive the four reserved tenements following re-verification. The developer assigned tenement D-1508 to the petitioners on March 24, 2022, and notified the Assistant Registrar of this decision, despite the petitioners’ guarantee and the Assistant Registrar’s inaction on the previous proposal.
The Assistant Registrar ruled on March 28, 2022, that the petitioner was not entitled to the tenement D-1508 that the developer had given to her. After that, on June 24, 2022, the Assistant Registrar held a lottery and Sangita Balu Zimal won tenement No. D-1508. On October 13, 2022, the petitioners received a directive from the Tehsildar (SRA) to vacate the tenement. In response to a petition filed by the petitioners on November 18, 2022, the Assistant Registrar upheld Sangita Balu Zimal’s tenement No. D-1508 allotment and ruled that the petitioner’s allotment to the developer was unlawful.
On December 19, 2022, the petitioner’s appeal to the AGRC was denied. In order to challenge the orders that maintained Sangita Balu Zimal’s allocation as legitimate, they filed the current writ petition. They also declared that the developer’s direct assignment to the petitioners was invalid. The petitioners said that since they had been living in the tenement since March 2022, eviction would be arbitrary and noted the developer’s proposal from July 2021 and the Assistant Registrar’s refusal to act on it.
SRA proposed alternate PAP tenements for the petitioners and endorsed the Assistant Registrar’s ruling. The developer was given a Letter of Intent (LoI) stating that the tenements would be allotted by lottery in the presence of an Assistant Registrar representative, the court observed. According to the court, the developer knew it lacked power when it proposed a lottery-based allocation in 2021. The court observed that the petitioners were granted ownership of tenement D-1508 by the developer in an arbitrary manner. In the letter dated March 1, 2022, Sangita Zimal was listed as one of the reserved tenements; nonetheless, the court said that the developer “clandestinely” awarded the petitioners tenement No. D-1508 in violation of this reservation. The petitioners were ordered to leave the tenement within four weeks and turn over control to the Estate Officer of SRA. The court also confirmed the orders of the Assistant Registrar, Tehsildar, and AGRC, confirming the legality of Sangita Zimal’s assignment. The petitioners were also instructed by the court to select a different PAP tenement that the SRA was offering.