Haryana’s ‘stilt+4’ building policy stayed till April 8

The Punjab and Haryana High Court on Thursday stayed till April 8, the next date of hearing, a 2024 Haryana government notification that allowed the construction of “stilt + 4 floor Policy” in state’s urban areas, saying that it appeared that the state was putting people’s safety at stake “merely to earn more revenue”.

In its order, the two-judge bench, said that the government, ignoring the “desperate shortage of infrastructural requirement in Gurugram,” had given a go-by to conduct an infrastructure capacity audit before implementing the policy. “It appears that the State of Haryana merely to earn more revenue has put the safety and security of members of general public at stake.”

“It thus, seems that the State has abdicated its constitutional duty of ensuring clean and healthy urban environment for the citizens of Gurugram,” said the bench of chief justice Sheel Nagu and justice Sanjiv Berry.

The court was dealing with a clutch of petitions from the residents of Gururgram and Panchkula challenging the Haryana government’s July 2, 2024, notification. A stilt-plus-four-floor structure includes a non-habitable ground floor designated for parking (stilt level) and four residential floors above it.

Initially notified in 2019, the policy was put in abeyance in February 2023 due to opposition across Haryana. In 2023, an expert panel was constituted by the government headed by Haryana Pollution Control Board chairman, P Raghavendra Rao with four other members. Its members included a former Haryana chief town planner; a representative from Haryana Real Estate Regulatory Authority (HRERA), Panchkula; chief town planner, HSIIDC; and senior town planner, Haryana Shehri Vikas Pradhikaran (HSVP) and department of town and country planing (TCP).

The petitions in court alleged that the government ignored the committee’s opinion and, instead, notified the implementation of the policy. They demanded that approvals for the constructions in Gurugram be halted until the completion of comprehensive infrastructure audits and necessary augmentation as recommended by the expert committee.

The court took note of a report by the expert committee, which, it said, “reveals the concern was that in the absence of any infrastructural back-up, any permission to increase the number of floors would lead to additional burden over the existing infrastructure of the city of Gurugram, which is on the verge of crumbling with increased use by a larger population (residing on the fourth floor) without adequate available infrastructural capacity, such as sewage, drainage, STP, congestion of traffic and pedestrians on road and internal roads, flooding of various low lying areas (which has become a common feature of Gurugram city) etc”.

The court also noted that a local commissioner was appointed and some localities of Gurugram had been surveyed in January 2026.

According to the court order, the inspection report revealed that the prescribed width of the internal roads of Sector 28, DLF Phase-I, against the prescribed width of 10 or 12 metres, the “motorable road area available for plying of traffic and pedestrians is only 3.9 to 4.8 metres”.

“This shrinkage is attributed to various reasons, which essentially are lack of adequate infrastructure of sanitations and sewerage, over-population, defective town planning, inadequate garbage disposal, blocking of aquifers by indiscriminate paving of roads, rampant construction activities thereby preventing recharging of ground-water etc,” it noted.

The court said that, since completion of arguments may take some more time, without commenting on the validity of notification in question, “the effect and operation of the impugned order/notification will remain stayed till the next date of hearing” on April 8.

The petitioners had asking for the policy to be stayed for a long time. The igh court had reserved its order on the issue in February.

The petitioners have been pressing for staying of the policy and since arguments were taking a long time, the high court had reserved its order on the issue of interim stay in February, which was pronounced on Thursday.

Source – Hindustan Times