No Good Ground To Interfere: Delhi High Court Upholds Direction For Demolition Of Signature View Apartments Built For 2010 Commonwealth Games

The Delhi High Court has upheld the direction for demolition of Signature View Apartments built for 2010 Commonwealth Games.

An Appeal was filed before the Court, challenging the Judgment of the Single Judge by which a Writ Petition was dismissed.

A Division Bench comprising Chief Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya and Justice Tushar Rao Gedela held, “Various reports of investigation by the Structural Consultants and findings of the testing agency were placed before the authority concerned who on consideration of the said material formed his opinion as per the requirement of Section 348 of the DMC Act and thereafter has passed the order for demolition of the buildings in question. … For the reasons aforesaid, we do not find any good ground to interfere in the orders passed by the learned Single Judge which are under challenge in this intra-Court appeal, which accordingly fails.”

The Bench said that there was no relevant material before the authority that passed the order for removal of the buildings.

Advocate Sachin Jain represented the Appellant while Senior Advocate Sanjay Jain represented the Respondents.

Facts of the Case

The Delhi Development Authority (DDA) had constructed 336 flats known as Signature View Apartments initially for the use/occupation of players and officials/officers of the Commonwealth Games, which were held in the month of October 2010. On conclusion of the games, these flats were sold by the DDA, for which an information brochure was issued in the year 2010, inviting applications for allotment of flats. The apartments comprised of 12 towers. Amongst others, the Appellant was also allotted a flat in the said apartments, and thereafter, he started residing with his family members in one of the flats. The flats of the residential scheme developed cracks and started showing continued deterioration in their structure, as a result of which incidents of falling interior ceilings of roofs of the flats and those of falling of large lumps of exterior plaster were reported.

Corrosion and rusting of the steel bars, with deterioration in the reinforced concrete, with heavy corrosion, was also reported. Resultantly, a Writ Petition was filed with the prayer to issue appropriate direction to the authorities concerned to demolish the flats and further to re-construct the flats and blocks. The Appellant also filed a Writ Petition with the prayer for issuing a direction restraining the authorities from demolishing the Signature View Apartments without following the due process of law. The Single Judge dismissed the same and hence, the case was before the Division Bench.

Reasoning

The High Court in view of the above facts, observed, “Merely because the Commissioner has not passed the order of removal of buildings; rather, it has been passed by his delegate, in our considered opinion, it will not make the order without jurisdiction or vitiated. It is to be further noticed that Section 348 empowers the authority concerned to pass an order of removal on his forming an opinion that the building is in ruinous condition or is likely to fall or it has become dangerous to the persons occupying the same or persons resorting to or passing-by such buildings.”

The Court noted that the material on the basis of which the order of removal of buildings has been passed is based on the reports of experts, which included the report by an expert from IIT, Delhi as also the test report regarding materials submitted by Shri Ram Institute of Industrial Research and these materials are germane to forming an opinion for fulfilling the requirement of Section 348 of the DMC Act.

“In any case, the satisfaction that the buildings have become ruinous and unsafe for human habitation, as is reflected from the order dated 18.12.2023, is formed on the basis of relevant material available before the authority concerned who has passed the order under Section 348 of the DMC Act and such reports were prepared by experts after conducting a thorough enquiry, inspection, certain laboratory tests etc.”, it added.

The Court remarked that the view taken by the Single Judge is not in any manner erroneous that the reports of the domain experts cannot be commented upon.

“If we peruse the orders passed by the learned Single Judge which are under challenge herein, what we find is that the learned Single Judge has considered various reports and has returned a finding that the buildings in question are structurally unsafe and further that repair works undertaken by the DDA had proved to be cosmetic since very structure of the building was found to be fundamentally weak”, it further noted.

Accordingly, the High Court dismissed the Appeal and upheld the impugned Judgment.

Cause Title- Man Mohan Singh Attri v. Union of India & Ors. (Neutral Citation: 2025:DHC:8214-DB)

Appearance:

Appellant: Advocates Sachin Jain and Ajay Kr. Agarwal.

Respondents: Senior Advocate Sanjay Jain, Panel Counsel Raghuvendra Upadhyay, Standing Counsel Puja S. Kalra, Advocates Sanjay Katyal, Kritika Gupta, Vidur Mohan, Harshita Sukhija, Vidushi Singhania, Purnima Jain, Tanmay Jain, and Virendra Singh.

Click here to read/download the Judgment