Society uplift hits ‘policy wall’

Ahmedabad: The state government’s popular amendment — ‘the 75% members consent’ — to the Gujarat Flat Owners Act, 1973 law, which was to catalyze redevelopment of old societies including those under Gujarat Co-Operative Societies Act, 1961, has hit a wall for hundreds of societies in the city.

They are either tangled up in a bureaucratic quagmire or gridlocked in courts. At Vivekanandnagar flats, a 50-year-old society in the posh Jodhpur neighborhood, members skip a heartbeat as chunks of concrete chips away from their society each day.

“It feels like sitting on a ticking bomb. For over a year now, we are fighting in the high court just because four of the 78 members dissented for redevelopment in our society ” says the president of Vivekanandnangar flats, Alpesh Patel.

In July last year the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) notified and warned the society that “the buildings are a threat to those living around them,” and that “all concrete reinforcements lie exposed.”

In December 2018, the whole society was classified as “dangerous”. “Why did the government include the 75% consent rule if there were no mechanisms to enforce it,” says Patel.

The registrar, Chetan Parmar, had told TOI earlier that the amendment has been made to the Gujarat Flat Owners Act and not the Gujarat Co-operatives Act and hence no redevelopment. There are 6,714 housing co-operatives in Ahmedabad. Contrary to Parmar’s view the urban development department in its December 2019 government order has clearly stated that the redevelopment clause also applies to housing societies that are governed by Gujarat Cooperatives Act as well.