The residents were completely flabbergasted at developer’s move to issue a combined bill for maintenance and electricity on April 10.
Agitated over the developer’s clubbing of maintenance and electricity bill, the residents of Palm Grove Height, a residential society at Ardee City in Sector 52, staged a protest on Monday.
The members of Palm Grove Heights Apartment Owners Association (PGH-AOA) and Ardee City RWA came together to demand omission of their maintenance bill from the electricity bill.
The residents were completely flabbergasted at developer’s move to issue a combined bill for maintenance and electricity on April 10.
The developer went ahead with such arrangement even when the society has a pre-paid electricity metering system in place and the residents for electricity in advance.
“We organised an open discussion to decide on our plan of action in the ongoing struggle against merging of maintenance and electricity bills, and adjustment of prepaid electricity charges against the inflated maintenance bills raised by the builder Ardee Infrastructure Private Limited (AIPL). Clubbing bills like this is illegal,” said Naresh Khushalani, president of PGH-AOA.
“In a similar matter between Ardee City residents and Ardee Infrastructure of May 2017, the Haryana Electricity Regulatory Commission issued a clear direction that the electricity and maintenance bills can’t be clubbed,” said Nishant Dudha, joint secretary PGH-AOA.
“Despite that, the developer is clubbing the bills. We have stopped paying maintenance to the developer from April 13 and we will continue to protest till the builder rectifies the error. If the developer does not do that we will approach the court,” added Dudha.
The protesting residents said that members of both the associations will demand the handover of maintenance to them if the developer fails to act as per the terms and conditions. They added that they will soon approach deputy commissioner Gurugram Vinay Pratap Singh in this regard.
Ardee City RWA general secretary Nihal Singh said, “The maintenance services are a no-profit, no-loss activity for the builder. However, in our case, AIPL sees this as a money-making opportunity without any sensitivity towards the residents.”
There was no response from vice-president of Ardee Infrastructure, Anil Hasija, to texts and calls for his response on the matter.
