DLF, Old Gurugram Owners Protest Demolitions at Mini Secretariat

GURUGRAM: Hundreds of homeowners from DLF colonies and Old Gurugram gathered at the Mini Secretariat on Wednesday against what they called unjust bulldozing of their properties, and closed a mahapanchayat with a decision to send a memorandum to Deputy Commissioner Uttam Kumar.

The meeting denounced District Town Planner R.S. Bhatth and the municipal corporation for alleged high-handedness. Speakers said the same colonies had come up with the administration's collusion and were now facing machines in the name of regulations. They argued that Haryana has never had a chief minister from southern Haryana, and that this is why their "pain is overlooked."

The core demand was regularisation, and soon. The government, they said, had itself framed stilt-plus-four rules and norms for paying-guest operations. Sudden sealing and demolition, in that telling, amounts to harassment of people who built to those signals. If any construction is over the line, they said, the municipal corporation and the Haryana Urban Development Authority should levy a compounding fee instead of bringing down rooms, kitchens and stilt conversions.

That argument is not new in DLF Phase 3, where enforcement teams have in recent weeks sealed multi-storey paying-guest buildings and demolished unauthorised rooms cut into stilt parking. Owners have said Cyber City's workforce lives in those rooms, and that sealing them does not create lawful housing overnight. Wednesday's gathering widened the frame from one phase to DLF and Old Gurugram together, and shifted the venue from a neighbourhood park to the Deputy Commissioner's door.

The memorandum route matters because DTCP's enforcement wing has been running a parallel drive in licensed colonies — Sushant Lok, Ardee City, South City and others — with show-cause notices, restoration orders, sealing and demolition where violations are not removed. Owners at the mahapanchayat want that machine paused until a policy exists for workforce housing, mixed use and compounding.

They are not claiming every extra room is legal. Their pitch is narrower: the state wrote stilt-plus-four and PG rules, the market filled those rules, and the remedy for leftover violations should be a fee, not a bulldozer. Whether the Deputy Commissioner can do more than receive the paper is another question. Building control in licensed colonies sits with town planning; the municipal corporation handles a different layer of encroachments. A memo to the DC is a political delivery, not a stay order.

By evening the gathering had dispersed, leaving the administration with a written list: regularise existing properties, stop sudden demolition, and if rules were broken, compound them. The next move is with the Deputy Commissioner's office and, above it, the town planning department that has already told owners in several colonies that unauthorised stilt rooms and setback coverage will not be left standing.