CHENNAI: The Madras High Court on Tuesday approved the redevelopment of the Jains Westminster apartments in Chennai, as opted by the majority of the flat owners, and directed all of them to hand over the keys to the builder by November 4.
The court granted the approval based on the submission made by the counsel for a two-member committee of retired high court judges—Justices KN Basha and K Kannan—that 216 of the flat owners chose redevelopment over reconstruction when the matter was put to voting at the recent general body meeting of the flat owners association.
“As many as 135 (owners) voted for reconstruction while 216 voted for redevelopment. The builder is permitted to go for redevelopment by the decision of the majority. The decision of the majority gets the seal of (approval) of this court,” a division bench of Justices SS Sundar and N Senthilkumar said.
Recording the submission of advocate Ravikumar that the two-member committee of retired judges had inspected 321 flats and keys of 310 flats were handed over to the builders, the bench directed the other flat owners also to hand over the keys. In order to enable the remaining flat owners to remove some of their articles from the flats, the bench directed the builder to keep the lift operational from October 22 to November 4.
Referring to the issue of the ratio of additional space of undivided share raised by advocate Richardson Wilson, the counsel for some of the flat owners, the bench said a decision, in this regard, could be taken at a later stage. The counsel for the builder Naveen Kumar Murthi informed the court that once all the keys were handed over, the redevelopment work would be started. The court also directed the builder to release the funds for the committee and the rental amount for the evacuees of the flats and adjourned the matter to November 4.
The court had constituted the committee to look into poor quality construction besides being tasked with the supervision of the evacuation of 472 occupants of the three blocks in the habitat.