UP-RERA Guides Homebuyers of Five Builder to Secure Claims

                GHAZIABAD: National Green Tribunal (NGT) 
has asked the Centre to initiate proceedings 
against the UP housing board commissioner 
for not appearing before the tribunal during a 
hearing on encroachments of green belts in 
Vasundhara.
The two-judge bench of Justice Sudhir 
Agarwal and expert member Afroz Ahmad, in 
its order in August this year noted, "An officer 
in the rank of housing commissioner, we 
expect, 
must be pre-occupied with official duties every 
day, but that does not mean that compliance 
with the tribunal's order would not be a part of 
the performance of official duty or is of less 
importance compared to other duties, 
particularly when non-compliance with the 
order of the tribunal is an offence under 
Section 26 of the National Green Tribunal Act, 
2010."

According to its provisions, failure to comply 
with the NGT order can lead to a jail term of 
three years or a fine of up to Rs 10 crore. The 
green panel has sought a compliance report 
within two months.

A housing board official told TOI that during an 
April 2024 hearing, the housing board 
commissioner had submitted an application in 
the NGT seeking exemption from personal 
appearance, but the court had found "no 
justification to grant exemption".
Balkar Singh, who took over as the UP housing 
board commissioner in March this year, was 
unavailable for comment.
The petition, filed in 2022 by Vasundhara 
resident Amit Kishore, had claimed that an RTI 
query had revealed the township has 5,50,545 
sqm green belt area which included 210 parks, 
but could not provide data on encroachment of 
these zones. Kishore filed a petition before the 
NGT stating green belts abutting residential 
sectors in Vasundhara were dotted with 
kiosks, while others were used as vending 
zones.
Kishore claimed 62 kiosks were running from 
green belts, several of them in sector 15 and 
Atal Chowk.
"Before the NGT could give any direction, 
Ghaziabad Municipal Corporation removed 
these kiosks. However, there was a lack of 
coordination between GMC and housing board 
officials over the encroachment of green belts. 
Subsequently, in April, NGT asked the DM, 
municipal commissioner, and housing board 
commissioner to appear personally," Kishore 
said.

Source : The Economic Time