GHAZIABAD : Allahabad high court has ordered the demolition of two 10-storey towers at Gulmohar Greens society in Mohan Nagar , ruling they were built illegally, and ordered an FIR against Friends Land Developers , the company that built it.




In a ruling with echoes of the Supertech Emerald Court case, which paved the way for demolition of two residential skyscrapers at the Noida society in 2022, the high court chastised Ghaziabad Development Authority (GDA) for colluding with the builder in allowing the two towers at Gulmohar Greens to take shape illegally. A division bench of justices Sudhanshu Chauhan and Saral Srivastava also ordered demolition of two extra floors built in four other towers, 16 to 19, within two months. The extra floors took these towers to 10 storeys from the originally sanctioned eight. There are a total of 32 flats (all under construction) across the illegal floors of these four towers.




Towers 27 and 28, which are to be fully razed, have 80 unoccupied flats. The court directed the Ghaziabad administration and police to provide security and assistance to GDA during the demolition, setting a time frame of two months to complete the exercise.




The bench ordered the state govt to initiate disciplinary proceedings within a month against then GDA vice-chairperson Atul Vats , under whose watch the construction took place. GDA was directed to pay Rs 50,000 to each of the 11 petitioners in the case within two months. “The officers of GDA are also in collusion with the promoter, and because of their slipshod approach, the petitioners and residents of the society had to suffer a lot,” the court stated. Calling it dereliction of duty by Vats, the order said, “...despite having knowledge about said fact, the vice-chairperson has sanctioned the third compounding by order dated Dec 18, 2024”.




Slapping a fine of Rs 25 lakh on Friends Land Developers, it ordered police to register the FIR within two weeks of the judgment. For illegal construction on common areas, it directed the builder to return the sale price of these areas to 85 ground-floor residents, along with construction cost and 10% interest. “It is a clear case where the promoter has misrepresented the correct facts and played fraud upon the apartment owners by selling common areas, and thus has committed an offence,” the court ruled.




In its Aug 31, 2021, verdict on Supertech’s twin towers Apex and Ceyane in Noida’s Sector 93A, Supreme Court had pulled up Noida Authority, saying the case revealed “a nefarious complicity of the planning authority” in the developer’s violations. It had held that the illegal construction was achieved through collusion between Supertech’s management and Noida Authority officials. “The record of this case is replete with instances which highlight the collusion between the officers of Noida Authority with the appellant and its management,” the court had said.




The 100-metre-tall towers were razed on Aug 28, 2022, using controlled implosion, generating 80,000 tonnes of debris and prompting stricter scrutiny of real estate projects across NCR.




Gulmohar Greens RWA had moved the high court against illegal construction in 2025, alleging deviations from the original layout plan that had proposed 34 towers with 904 dwelling units. Residents alleged 112 units were added by the builder without their consent after paying a compounding fee to GDA thrice for approvals for layout deviations.




In its 95-page judgment, the court noted that the project began in 2006 and remains incomplete more than 20 years later. It also observed that the builder chose not to obtain a completion certificate, although the UP Apartments Act, 2010, makes it its responsibility. “In such a situation, apartment owners cannot afford to wait till the time the promoter obtains a completion certificate. Because of this compulsion and constraints, apartment owners have no option but to occupy the apartments to ease out their financial burden,” the court said.




The case dates to 2006, when the original promoter, SVP Builders India Limited, teamed up with Friends Land Developers and applied for a map sanction to develop Gulmohar Greens. The plan was for 904 units in 34 towers, each with a basement and eight storeys, on 87,930 sqm. The society is located near Hindon air base, and Indian Air Force officers objected that 4,560 sqm of the land belonged to the defence ministry.




GDA cancelled the map approval on July 3, 2010, but the promoter had by then built 720 of the 904 sanctioned units. It applied for the first compounding on Nov 15, 2011, and GDA compounded the 720 existing units. The map also sanctioned 374 new units.




“The promoter introduced modifications in the basement, machine room and ground floors of Towers 2 and 3. On Jan 13, 2015, it again applied for a second compounding, which too was sanctioned,” Group Captain VVS Rana (retd), a resident and one of the petitioners, told TOI. “The promoter again introduced deviation in the second compounding map and applied for third compounding on Dec 18, 2024. The promoter did not take consent of petitioners while applying for the compounding, which is in violation of Section 5 (3) (a) of the UP Apartment (Promotion of Construction, Ownership and Maintenance) Rules, and yet the map was sanctioned,” Rana said.




The builder, according to petitioners, also encroached on common areas to create space for amenities like a machine room and generator room. In 2025, 11 residents filed a case in Allahabad HC. GDA vice-chairperson Nand Kishore Kalal said the authority was yet to go through the judgment. “The court’s order will be followed in letter and spirit,” he said.




Friends Land Developers promoter Vijay Jindal could not be reached for a comment.