HC ORDERS DEMOLITION OF 2 NOIDA HIGH-RISE BUILDINGS

ALLAHABAD/NOIDA: The Allahbad high court on Friday ordered the demolition of two 40-storeyed residential towers in Noida for fl outing nor ms and asked real estate fir m Supertech to return booking amounts of depositors with interest.

The towers, with 857 apartments — of which 627 were booked, were built by the realtor in Noida’s Sector 93-A and formed a part of its residential project named Emerald Court.

The court directed the Noida authority to demolish the two towers within three months and asked the realtor to return the booking amounts, with 14% interest, to the 627 home-buyers. It also ordered for FIRs to be lodged against concerned Noida officials for allowing Supertech to build the towers without permission.

The order was passed by a division bench of Justice VK Shukla and Justice Suneet Kumar on a petition by Emrald Court Owner Resident Welfare Association.

The court observed it could not overlook flouting of building regulations and passing of maps against norms. It specified that such an act was not possible without the collusion of builders and officials.

“This necessitates punitive action. The builders would take advantage of the situation in case the court adopts a lenient approach in such cases. The builders were committing a fraud with people and hence cannot be allowed to go scotfree,” the court observed.