Housing Society vs Builder: STP, EC and Green Area Disputes

If your society's STP has failed, the builder never took environmental clearance, or the park now has a tower on it, you have more than one forum, and picking the right one first saves months. The short answer: EC and consent conditions bind the builder as the project proponent until they are properly transferred. After handover, whoever runs the STP and holds, or should hold, the consent to operate answers to the pollution board. The NGT can hear EC and STP violations, while sanctioned plan and green area changes go first to the development authority.

This guide is for RWAs, AOAs and flat buyers. It takes the four questions we hear most often, in the words people use, and answers each with the forum, the documents and the honest limits. For background on when a building needs EC, see our guide on environmental clearance for building projects.

Society disputes with builders mix sewage, approvals and money, which is why our work on sewage and non-working STPs usually runs alongside a RERA or consumer case rather than replacing it.

The essentials

Our society's STP doesn't work and sewage is overflowing. Who is responsible: the builder, the RWA or the maintenance agency?

Start with the paperwork, because the answer sits there. A project with an STP needs consent to establish and consent to operate from the State Pollution Control Board (DPCC in Delhi) under section 25 of the Water Act, and if it crossed the EC threshold, its environmental clearance carries conditions on sewage treatment, reuse of treated water and sludge. All of these are issued to the project proponent, which is the builder. Until they are formally transferred, the builder carries them.

Handover changes the picture, but less than builders claim. Once the society or AOA takes over common areas, it usually takes over the daily running of the STP: paying the operator, buying chemicals, keeping the logbook. What handover does not do is cure defects that existed on that day. If the plant was designed for 400 flats and the project has 650, or it never had a working tertiary stage, that is the builder's failure and stays so.

The board looks at it differently. It issues notices to whoever holds the consent or should hold it, meaning the occupier running the outlet. If the CTO is still in the builder's name, the notice goes to the builder. If the society runs the plant with no consent in its own name, the board can treat the society as the occupier. Many RWAs learn this from a show-cause notice.

The maintenance agency is a contractor. If it skipped dosing, switched off blowers to save power or faked logbook entries, whoever hired it can claim against it under the contract. In front of the board, though, the agency's failure is treated as the occupier's failure. Pointing at the agency will not make a notice go away.

Who usually answers for which STP problem

A starting point only. The real answer depends on your handover agreement, the consent orders and the EC.

If the CTO is still in the builder's name years after handover, get it transferred or apply afresh. Our guide on CTE and CTO explains the two consents.

What happens when you complain to the pollution board about the STP

A written complaint to the board's regional office usually leads to an inspection, sometimes weeks later. The inspector checks the plant, the flow meter and the logbook, and may sample inlet and outlet water. If the outlet fails the consent norms, a show-cause notice follows, and for serious failures the board can order closure or stopping of electricity and water under section 33A of the Water Act.

The uncomfortable part: the board does not apportion blame between builder and society. It acts against the occupier in front of it. A society that complains about the builder can end up with a direction against itself if it runs the plant. So complain with your documents ready: handover papers, design capacity, lab reports showing the plant fails even when run properly, and your letters to the builder.

If a notice lands on the society, reply on time and in substance. Show what you have done since handover and what the builder failed to hand over, and ask the board to proceed against the project proponent for design defects. Boards usually give time when residents show a real plan. Our page on power or water cut on board orders covers the worst case. In society disputes that Advocate B.K. Singh has handled, the document that most often settled who was responsible was the handover list of assets, read alongside the STP's design capacity.

The builder has no environmental clearance (EC). Can we file in the NGT?

Yes, if the project needed EC and did not have it before construction began. Under the EIA Notification 2006, building projects with a built-up area of 20,000 sq m and above need prior EC, which for most housing projects comes from the State Environment Impact Assessment Authority (SEIAA) as category B. Built-up area is not plot area: it counts all floors, so a project on a modest plot can cross the line.

The EIA Notification is made under the Environment (Protection) Act 1986, one of the seven Acts in Schedule I of the NGT Act. So building without prior EC can go to the NGT under section 14, within six months of when the cause of action first arose, extendable by 60 days. Residents often argue that occupation without EC is a continuing violation, but timing arguments are risky. Read our guide on whether it is too late to go to the NGT before you draft.

The bigger question is what you want. The NGT can direct the SEIAA and the board to inspect, impose environmental compensation on the builder and direct compliance. It rarely orders an occupied building pulled down. The Supreme Court in Alembic Pharmaceuticals v Rohit Prajapati (2020) made clear its dislike of ex post facto EC, meaning clearance granted after the work is done. But the law on regularising such projects has shifted in more recent Supreme Court decisions, so get current advice before deciding whether you want the EC refused or granted with heavy conditions.

Before filing, write to the SEIAA and the board asking for action, and file an RTI for the EC file. Our guide on whether the NGT can hear your case sets out the threshold questions.

We have no power connection because the builder has no EC, and the builder's appeal has been pending in the NGT for two years. Can we approach the NGT Principal Bench?

You can approach the NGT, but through the right door. When the builder's matter is already pending, the cleanest route is usually an application to be impleaded or to intervene in that same matter, before the bench where it is pending. Residents living on DG sets and paying for diesel have a strong reason to be heard. A miscellaneous application carries a court fee of at least ₹500.

What you cannot do is go to the Principal Bench simply to get around a zonal bench. Each bench covers specified states, and you approach the one covering your project. If your society is in Delhi, Noida, Ghaziabad or Gurugram, the Principal Bench in New Delhi is the bench anyway. If it is in Pune or Chennai, you go to the zonal bench for your state.

Once on record, ask for early hearing and interim directions: the SEIAA to decide the pending EC application within a fixed time, the board to inspect and report on the STP and DG sets, and liberty for residents to approach the discom meanwhile. Section 18(3) says the NGT aims to decide matters within six months, and a two-year delay is a fair point to raise politely.

The second option is a separate application by the RWA under section 14 or 15 before the bench with jurisdiction. This suits a wider grievance, such as sewage overflow, missing STP capacity or compensation for months of diesel. The bench will often tag it with the builder's matter. Keep the prayers environmental. Refund, delay interest and possession belong elsewhere.

What if the builder abandons the NGT case?

This happens more than people expect. A builder who has sold most of the flats has little reason to keep paying lawyers. If the builder stops appearing, the appeal may be dismissed for default, leaving no EC and no power. That is the strongest reason to get impleaded early: as a party, you can ask the bench to hear the matter on merits rather than close it.

Even then, be realistic. Residents cannot obtain an EC in the builder's name by litigation alone. The tribunal can direct the authorities to act, but someone still has to file documents, pay fees and carry out conditions. So write to the SEIAA and the board asking what is pending and asking them to proceed. Taking over compliance work yourselves can shift liabilities onto the association, so take advice first.

For the builder's default itself, use the forums built for it. A RERA complaint can seek directions to obtain approvals and complete the project, with compensation. A consumer complaint can claim deficiency in service. The NGT is not a refund court. On power, some discoms provide temporary connections in such cases, but rules differ by state and approvals may be demanded first. Treat interim supply as a stopgap, not the end of the case.

The builder cut trees or built on the green area. What can we do?

Split it into three, because three authorities deal with it. First, tree felling. Most states have tree laws (in Delhi, the Delhi Preservation of Trees Act 1994) that require permission from the tree officer or forest department before trees are cut, usually with compensatory planting. Ask by RTI whether permission was granted and on what conditions; if none, complain with dated photographs and a count of stumps. Our page on tree felling permission shows what a proper permission looks like.

Second, the sanctioned plan. The park, setbacks and open spaces are fixed in the plan sanctioned under the building bye-laws by the development authority: the DDA or MCD in Delhi, the Noida Authority, the GDA in Ghaziabad, the DTCP in Haryana. A tower or club house extension on land shown as green breaches the plan. The complaint goes to that authority, which can refuse completion or order the unauthorised part removed. Under the RERA Act, a builder also cannot alter the sanctioned plan or common areas without the consent of two-thirds of allottees.

Third, the EC. Most EC letters for housing projects carry conditions on green area percentage and trees to be planted and retained. Building over that area breaches the EC, which goes to the SEIAA and, if nothing happens, to the NGT. Ask for the builder's six-monthly compliance reports, which often claim green cover that does not exist. That gap between paper and ground is persuasive evidence.

Move quickly. Once a structure is complete and occupied, every forum becomes reluctant to order it down, and the remedy shrinks to compensation and replanting elsewhere. Our work on builder environmental violations usually starts with an urgent letter to all three authorities on the same day.

Problem vs forum: where an RWA should go

Most societies end up in two forums at once. That is fine if each case asks only for what that forum can give.

The NGT is strongest when authorities have failed to act on clear violations, and weakest when the real dispute is money owed by the builder.

Documents the RWA should collect before doing anything

Many of these should have come at handover. If they did not, ask the builder in writing, then use RTI with the board, the SEIAA and the development authority. An RTI reply is due within 30 days.

A step-by-step plan for an RWA

This order works for most societies. Skipping the early steps is the commonest reason cases stall.

For the mechanics of filing, see our guide on how to file a case in the NGT, and for what happens at hearings and inspections, see what happens after you file.

Before you file in the NGT, check these

Mistakes societies make, and when not to file

The commonest mistake is running a failing STP for years in silence, then blaming the builder when the board's notice arrives. By then the society is the occupier and the builder points to the handover papers. Raise defects in writing at handover and every few months after. Those letters become your best evidence.

The second is asking the NGT for what it does not give. It will not order refunds, delay interest or conveyance deeds. If that is what residents mostly want, RERA or the consumer commission is the primary forum, and an NGT case may only add cost.

Do not file just to pressure the builder in a negotiation: the NGT can award compensatory costs under section 23 against a false or vexatious claim. And think before asking the tribunal to cancel approvals for a building your own members live in. Sometimes the better outcome is EC with strict conditions and an order to upgrade the STP.

Where to go next

If the society also faces a board notice, see our page on consent to operate for what the board expects. For cases run by residents' bodies, read about our work on environmental cases for RWAs and communities.