Gurugram’s growth outpaces its grid: HC halts stilt+4 policy in Haryana, flags “crumbling” civic spine

The court’s strongly worded order quoted from the petitioner’s prayers and the Supreme Court’s July 28, 2025 directive in Special Leave to Appeal (C) No.212 of 2024, which had reserved liberty for the High Court to decide interim reliefs on merits. These included staying the notification “until the completion of comprehensive infrastructure audits and necessary augmentation as recommended by the Expert Committee”, restraining occupancy certificates until water, sewage, drainage and road networks are upgraded, and directing a freeze on new stilt+4 applications.

The bench noted that it had earlier rejected similar interim pleas in March and June 2025 but was now persuaded to act after the Supreme Court’s intervention and mounting evidence of infrastructure stress. Arguments in the PIL have continued for months, with hearings listed on more than a dozen dates between October 2025 and March 2026, prompting the petitioner to press urgently for interim protection.

A key trigger for the stay was a physical inspection ordered by the court on January 29, 2026 in Sector 28, DLF Phase-I, Gurugram. The commission, comprising the Additional Advocate General or nominee, petitioner’s counsel and the Secretary, District Legal Services Authority, measured internal roads and found significant shrinkage. According to the report, “the average motorable road of 12 mtr. has shrunk to 4.5 mtr. and that of the 10 mtr. to 4.0 mtr.” The court observed that this shrinkage stemmed from “lack of adequate infrastructure of sanitations & sewerage, over-population, defective town planning, inadequate garbage disposal, blocking of aquifers… rampant construction activities thereby preventing recharging of ground-water etc.”

The judges also quoted from the Expert Committee report chaired by P. Raghavendra Rao, which warned against blanket implementation of the stilt+4 policy. The committee had recommended that such construction in existing sectors “may only be permitted in identified blocks… bounded by roads of 12 m or above width” and only after an “Infrastructure Capacity Audit”. It prescribed a detailed SOP requiring agencies to prepare an audit within three months covering water supply, sewerage, drainage, power, parking and fire safety, followed by verification by technical experts and approval by the Deputy Commissioner or a nominated senior officer.

Summarising the committee’s core concern, the court noted that “in the absence of any infrastructural back-up, any permission to increase the number of floors would lead to additional burden over the existing infrastructure of the city of Gurugram, which is on the verge of crumbling with increased use by a larger population… sewage, drainage, STP, congestion of traffic and pedestrians on road and internal roads, flooding of various low lying areas (which has become a common feature of Gurugram city) etc.”

In one of its sharpest observations, the court said: “It appears that the State of Haryana merely to earn more revenue has put the safety and security of members of general public at stake. State and its functionaries turning a Nelson’s eye towards the desperate shortage of infrastructural requirement in Gurugram city have given a go by to the all important aspect of conducting ‘INFRASTRUCTURE CAPACITY AUDIT’ before implementing the stilt +4 policy. It thus, seems that the State has abdicated its constitutional duty of ensuring clean and healthy urban environment for the citizens of Gurugram.”

The July 2, 2024 notification had allowed stilt+4 floors even on unapproved plans through a composition policy, with permissions to be granted within 90 days on payment of 10 times the normal charges. The High Court has now effectively frozen this regime till further orders.

The batch of petitions contains a PIL filed by a group of residents of Panchkula, led by Gen.. V.P. Malik (Retd.). The batch also includes a PIL by another resident of Panchkula who, apart from the above grounds, has also challenged the legality of the Haryana Building Code, 2017 and the Stilt+4 policy on the ground that the State of Haryana did not have the statutory and legislative competence to frame the Building Code and Stilt+4 policy.

Last week, their advocates Samarth Sagar and Sankalp Sagar had argued that that the policy has been framed by the State only for earning revenue by sacrificing the statutory interests and ignoring the recommendations made by the Expert Committee constituted by the State itself.