Registrar Tells Aura RWA to Open Park to EWS

GURUGRAM: The district registrar of firms and societies has directed the residents' welfare association of Mahindra Aura in Sector 110 to allow economically weaker section flat owners access to the society park, internal roads and common pathways after a 70-year-old resident said he was stopped from entering.

Kashmir Singh approached the authorities on 31 August. District registrar Arpit Gehlawat, in an order dated 15 September, told the Mahindra Aura RWA, its office-bearers and security staff not to restrict Singh, his wife Meena Rani, or other EWS residents from using common internal roads and pathways, and to permit entry to parks and open green spaces. The order also said no resident should face intimidation or discriminatory policing by management or guards.

Complaint path and RWA challenge

Singh alleged that RWA members told him EWS residents had no right to common areas and that parking marked for the EWS block had been occupied with a shed built on it. He raised the issue at a Samadhan Shivir with the Gurugram deputy commissioner, after which the complaint reached the registrar. He said he and his wife, both senior citizens, visited the registrar's office twice seeking relief.

The RWA has denied wrongdoing and says it will challenge the order. President SS Gill said an appeal would go to higher authorities in Chandigarh on Saturday. He argued that government-approved bylaws state EWS flat owners have no stake in common areas because they did not contribute to their development, cannot become RWA members, received flats on a subsidised basis and pay minimum maintenance. Former general secretary Rajesh Arora said the registrar had exceeded his office's mandate. According to Arora, the complex has 599 flats and 141 EWS units, and regular flat owners pay more than Rs 11,000 a month in maintenance.

The dispute sits at the junction of housing policy and day-to-day condo rules. EWS blocks were meant to sit inside the same gated layout; whether that includes park and pathway rights is now headed for an appellate fight. Until a higher forum stays or sets aside Gehlawat's order, the written direction to the RWA and its security staff is to keep the park and internal roads open to EWS residents, including the elderly couple who brought the complaint.

For other Gurugram societies that run separate EWS towers with tighter gate rules, the Aura order will be read closely even if it is later appealed. The registrar's language on peaceful recreation and against discriminatory policing goes beyond one couple's park visit. Gill's planned Chandigarh appeal will test how far society bylaws can fence off common greens when EWS units were approved as part of the same project map.