SC quashes Punjab and Haryana HC decision on Gurugram’s Ambience Island project

Posted on by Vividh Bharathi

New Delhi, Jan 20 (IANS) In a significant relief to residents, tenants, and other stakeholders of the Ambience Island project in Gurugram, the Supreme Court on Tuesday set aside a judgment of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, which had quashed approvals relating to the project and ordered a CBI probe.

Allowing the appeals filed by the Ambience Group and related parties, a bench of Justices J.B. Pardiwala and Sandeep Mehta held that the Punjab and Haryana High Court had erred in interfering with the delicensing and relicensing of land parcels forming part of the integrated township.

Setting aside the impugned July 10, 2020 judgment, the apex court also directed that the connected proceedings pending before the National Green Tribunal (NGT) will remain in abeyance until the Punjab and Haryana High Court decides another writ petition filed by certain homebuyers, uninfluenced by any observations made by the Supreme Court.

The dispute arose from allegations by some homebuyers that land originally earmarked for residential use in Ambience Island had been utilised for the construction of commercial towers.

Accepting these contentions, the Punjab and Haryana High Court in 2020 had not only invalidated the approvals granted by Haryana’s Department of Town and Country Planning (DTCP) for Ambience Commercial Tower II, but had also ordered a CBI investigation into the matter.

In its detailed order, the Justice Pardiwala-led bench noted that the expression “delicensing” was not alien to the statutory framework and that the Punjab and Haryana High Court’s sweeping findings of illegality and collusion were unsustainable on the material placed on record.

The apex court said that branding the entire process as fraudulent and directing a criminal investigation, without satisfying the settled parameters for such an exercise, was unwarranted.

The Supreme Court clarified that the challenges made by certain homebuyers in a new writ petition against the DTCP findings would be examined independently by the Punjab and Haryana High Court on its own merits.

Before the apex court, the Ambience Group was represented by senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi, Abhishek Manu Singhvi, Pinaki Misra and Sanjeev Ralli, along with advocates from the leading litigation firm Karanjawala & Co.

–IANS

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