The Supreme Court (SC) has upheld the Chandigarh administration’s decision of banning conversion of residential buildings into floor-wise apartments and selling portions of it outside the family, across the city.
Event Context
While declaring so, SC had said the Chandigarh Heritage Conservation Committee will consider the issue of re-densification in these sectors. After that the UT administration will consider amending the Chandigarh Master Plan-2031 and the 2017 apartment rules in accordance with the committee’s recommendations. Any amendments will have to be placed before the central government for approval, the top court had said.
Following this judgment, UT’s heritage conservation committee decided not to allow the apartmentalisation and issued a public notice on February 10, 2023. The curbs, however, were not restricted to the first 30 sectors and included the entire city. This notice was challenged before the Punjab and Haryana high court and subsequently reached the apex court in 2025.
One of the petitioners, Pooja Bharat Kapoor, who had challenged the HC judgement of February 2025, had claimed that she is a cancer patient and unable to sell her portion of the house and spend her final days with her family/ niece. “The UT notification creates a situation where the sale of a portion of the property can only be done within the family. It stops owners of the property from selling, gifting or bequeathing the property to an individual who is not a family member,” she had submitted.
It was also argued that the UT administration misinterpreted the 2023 judgment of the apex court and curtailed rights available to the citizens of the city to buy and sell property.
Team Analysis
The UT administration had come out with a notification, with effect from February 10, 2023, rejecting building plans of residential buildings where all co-owners were not from the same family – thus banning the sale of shares of a property outside the family.
The UT’s decision had come following an SC judgment in January 2023 ruling that the first 30 sectors of the city carried the heritage status of Le Corbusier zone and, therefore, conversion of residential houses into floor-wise apartments cannot be permitted in these sectors.
Dismissing the appeals, the SC said, “..we are satisfied that the view taken by the high court in the impugned judgment(s) is legally correct and calls for no interference.” It also took note of its own judgment of January 2023 in which the first 30 sectors of Chandigarh were declared heritage sectors. The bench was presided over by chief justice Surya Kant with two other judges – justice Joymala Bagchi and justice Vipul M Pancholi.
UT’s flip flop
In 2001, the administration had notified the Chandigarh Apartment Rules, whereby single residential units could be sub-divided into apartments. But it was repealed in October 2007. The administration always maintained that no permission is being granted to convert residential buildings into apartments. During a proceeding in HC, however, it had come to light that between 2016 and 2019, as many as 891 sale deeds were registered by the estate office, wherein a part of the property was sold outside the family.
A HC judgment of 2022 said residential plots in Chandigarh can have multiple shareholders, even outside the family. It was against this judgment, in which SC in 2023 had banned apartmentalisation. The apex court order had come on a plea from an RWA, seeking an order to the administration not to permit residential plots to be constructed or utilised as apartments as permitted by the HC.
Being fiercely debated for years now, the ban on the sale of shares of the property had become an election issue in 2024 Lok Sabha polls with a section of residents demanding that the sale of co-owned plots be allowed outside the family.
MP Manish Tewari had called this step as a “misinterpretation and misreading of the SC judgment”. UT is now examining the issue afresh and has hinted that it may make some relaxations for the residents of southern sectors.
