Initially built as Asia’s largest mall, Ambience mall might be demolished due to unauthorized construction
Observing that the builder and authorities had acted in collusion, the Punjab and Haryana High Court Friday directed the CBI to probe the matter of construction of Ambience Mall on the land meant for a housing project in Gurgaon and asked the agency to complete the investigation within six months.
The bench of Justices Rajan Gupta and Karamjit Singh also ordered a CBI probe into the “illegal” conversion of land from residential to commercial, and the alleged connivance between the authorities and the builder.
“In view of the fact that the responsibility has to be fixed, it is further directed that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) would investigate the entire issue after registering a formal FIR by a team of Officers to be chosen by the Director, CBI within six weeks from today,” the court order reads.
The petition stated that Ambience Mall was constructed on the Ambience Lagoon Island Residential Complex, with 18.98 acres of land adjacent to the Delhi-Jaipur National Highway, in Gurugram, which comprises a residential complex, commercial buildings as well as a Mall. Violating the builder-buyer agreement and provisions of the Haryana Development and Regulation of Urban Area Act, 1975, the authorities had allowed the construction of the mall reducing the residential area to less than half at 7.9 acres.
The builder flouted the law from the day he applied for a license in 1992, the court said. During the hearing, it was discovered that he had never submitted the lay-out plan while applying for a licence and at the outset made changes to the applications.
Strangely, the court remarked, this application was accepted by the authorities and even license was granted. “It is inconceivable that concerned authorities failed to notice the stark omissions, interpolations and tampering with the basic document required for the purpose of initiation of a project,” said the court.
This made the court observe: “It appears, the builder, never intended to submit the lay out plan as his intention from the very beginning was just not to establish a housing project but other commercial buildings within the area sanctioned for group housing.”
