Bombay HC: Land Shares Frozen at Conveyance Date, Not Later TDR Plans

Justice Sandeep Marne of the Bombay High Court, in an order dated September 16, 2026, set aside three deemed conveyance orders granted to housing societies in a Goregaon East layout and sent the matter back to the Competent Authority for fresh calculation. The dispute involved a 21,807.18 sq m sub-plot on A.K. Vaidya Marg shared by Satellite Garden I, Sadguru Complex 1 (AB), and Satellite Tower Cooperative Housing Societies.

Why the Court Intervened

The Competent Authority had used inconsistent methods to divide the land, giving one society its plinth area, another a much smaller share, and a third a share that included recreational ground. The core problem was that a 2010 revised layout plan — used for some of the calculations — showed a much larger built-up area (BUA) than the original 2005 sanctioned plan, because it incorporated slum Transferable Development Rights (TDR) loaded onto the plot afterward. The court held that this later, TDR-inflated plan could not be used to decide how much land each society was entitled to.

The Court's Key Principle

The judgment lays down a rule with implications well beyond Goregaon: a society's proportionate share of land "crystallises and freezes" at the point its right to deemed conveyance arises under the Maharashtra Ownership Flats Act (MOFA). Any subsequent revision to the layout plan — including added TDR or FSI — cannot be used to shrink or reshuffle that entitlement later.

What This Means for Housing Societies

• Societies pursuing deemed conveyance should insist that land-share calculations use the layout plan in force at the time redevelopment or conveyance rights first arose, not a later revised plan.
• Where a builder or Competent Authority has added TDR/FSI to a layout after possession, societies should scrutinise whether this has been used to alter their original land entitlement.
• Societies sharing a common plot with others (as in most large layouts) should keep dated copies of sanctioned layout plans, since these become the basis for any future land-division dispute.
• An architect's certificate calculating land shares should clearly state which sanctioned plan and date it relies on — this is often the crux of later litigation.

The Competent Authority has been directed to appoint an architect to prepare a fresh land-division certificate for the four buildings on the plot, based strictly on the 2005 sanctioned BUA figures, with no share reserved for an unconstructed fifth building or temple shown in the original plans.