Aditya Birla Group-backed Aditya Birla Real Estate Ltd (ABREL) said that the company does not see any impact in its operations, including its ongoing Birla Niyaara luxury housing project in Worli, as it faced a setback at the Supreme Court in its fight with the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) over possession of a land parcel in Mumbai's Lower Parel, measuring around five acres, after the apex court sided with Mumbai's civic body.
"We would like to clarify that the land in question is completely separate from the Birla Niyaara project at Worli. There is no impact on our ongoing developments at the Birla Niyaara site, and the two are unrelated," an ABREL spokesperson said in a statement to Moneycontrol. The Niyaara development is estimated to have a revenue potential of more than Rs 10,000 crore, according to company officials.
The Supreme Court bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Prasanna B. Varale overturned a Bombay High Court order from 2022, which had ordered the BMC to formally transfer the land parcel to Aditya Birla Real Estate (then Century Textiles) after the latter filed a writ petition. The initial scheme, to house underprivileged workers at Century Textiles' erstwhile cotton mills, was floated in 1919, with the company leasing the land to the Improvement Trust in 1927.
In the statement, the company said that it had paid to construct the accommodations in full, and after the expiry of a 28 year-lease, it has been in "undisturbed and uninterrupted" possession of the land, and had also paid property taxes to the BMC.
ABREL also added that it is seeking legal advice on the way ahead, adding that it was forced to file the original writ petition in 2017 after the BMC "failed to formalise" the land's transfer to the company, as was required under existing legal statutes, such as the Improvement Trust Act.
In its order, the two-judge Supreme Court bench questioned the company's move to "sit still" on its rights for more than five decades before approaching legal avenues.
The Supreme Court order, dated January 7, had sent Aditya Birla Real Estate's shares into the red, trading lower and closing by nearly 4 percent at Rs 2,220 on January 8. The company has extensive business development plans in the south Mumbai market, including new phases at the Birla Niyaara, and recently purchased a ten-acre land parcel from Bombay Dyeing promoter Nusli Wadia in Worli, worth more than Rs 1,000 crore.
