India, March 20 -- The Bombay high court on Tuesday ruled that a landowner cannot be treated as a "co-promoter" under the Maharashtra Ownership Flats Act (MOFA) if the developer acted independently, and struck down an interim order passed by the Dindoshi Civil Court that had stalled the development of a 120,000-square-metre (sqm) plot in Borivali East.

"This is an abuse of the process of the court and a misuse of beneficial legislation," Justice Kamal Khata said, as he dismissed a plea filed by Western Edge II Premises Co-operative Housing Society. "MOFA, enacted to protect flat purchasers from unscrupulous promoters, cannot be turned into a weapon to appropriate the landowner's reserved rights," he added.

The case concerned a plot meas...