MUMBAI, 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 measuring 31,323 sqm that Western Edge II shares with two other housing societies, Western Edge I and Samarpan Exotica. In February 2005, the landowner, Cable Corporation of India Ltd (CCIL), had granted Kanakia Spaces Realty Pvt Ltd rights to develop 31,323 sqm of its 151,328 sqm property in Borivali East. Accordingly, the company constructed three buildings on the plot, and handed over possession of the ready flats to their respective buyers in 2010 and 2012. However, disputes began in 2019, when BMC issued notices alleging illegal additions and alterations to the Western Edge II building, resulting in an excess FSI use of about 4,226 sqm. Eventually Western Edge II filed a suit in the civic court in September 2022. On October 2023, the civil court issued an interim order restraining CCIL from commencing any construction, utilising any FSI or transferable development rights (TDR) on the land, or creating any third-party rights in it. The interim order came about seven months after CCIL obtained the BMC's permission to construct high-rises on the remaining plot, prompting the company to approach the high court. The high court held that the trial court could not have passed such a drastic order, especially when the flat purchasers were well aware that CCIL had granted Kanakia Spaces Realty the right to independently develop the 31,323-sqm plot, with an FSI of 59,157 sqm. Justice Khata rejected the society's argument that CCIL, as the landowner, was also a co-promoter under MOFA, and that it could not exploit the development potential of the remaining property without informing the flat purchasers. The court rejected the society's reliance on the words "causes to be constructed" in the definition of "promoter" under MOFA. "Every act that facilitates construction cannot amount to causing construction," the court said. The court said the landowner in this case could not be characterised as a promoter, and that the statutory obligations under MOFA, including the obligation to execute a conveyance under Section 11, attach to the developer, not to the owner. "In the present case, the society is not being denied what it bargained for," the judge said. "What the society seeks is something more, namely rights in FSI/TDR that never formed part of the developer's entitlement," the court added. Noting that this attempt was "an abuse of the process of the court and a misuse of beneficial legislation", the court also ordered Western Edge II CHS to pay the litigation cost of Rs.10 lakh to CCIL....