As the pollution continues to rise in Delhi-NCR, the government has recently temporarily banned construction activities. However, the continuous banning has hurt the sector badly which was conveyed to the Environment Minister by the real estate fraternity. A report by SURFACES REPORTER (SR).
Successive Construction Ban
Many distinguished real estate personalities including Mr. Manoj Gaur from CREDAI NCR, Mr. Lalit Aggarwal-Vice Chairman-Signature Global, Harsh Bansal-Owner, Unity Group, Vipin Aggarwal, CMD, Nimbus Group and Satish Garg from Nirman Udyog Morcha alongwith various representatives from allied industries went to meet Union Minister, Shri. Bhupendra Yadav, Minister Environment, Forest and Climate Change to discuss the effects of successive construction bans on the industry.
As part of the real estate fraternity, Mr. Lalit Aggarwal, Co-founder & Vice Chairman, Signature Global (India) Limited put forward very relevant points in front of the honourable minister. He apprised the ministry and said, “There is no doubt that pollution has become one of the biggest challenges, especially in the National Capital Region. However, ad hoc blanket ban on all the construction activities has its own associated problems and impact. On the one hand, there are delays in construction and on the other hand, the cost of construction increases considerably. This leads to even more delay for the customers to get possession of their completed properties.”
He further added that, “Given that, most projects have a completion deadline as per RERA compliance, even more for projects in affordable housing segment, where there is statutory timeline of four years to complete the project, such bans every year cumulatively delay the project significantly. We request and expect that government will provide some flexibility either in the RERA deadlines or allow those activities which do not create pollution like painting, plumbing, wiring and soon.”
He further added that Real estate is the second largest employment generating sector in the country. Such bans not only cause bottlenecks leading to the loss of jobs of lakhs of construction workers, but also causes huge losses to other allied industries related to the real estate sector. In such a situation, construction ban should be implemented only on very selective basis so that the health of people, employment, real estate business as well as the interests of the common home buyers are not affected.